Musgrove Park Hospital (ISO 20000)

Musgrave Park Hospital gains ISO 20000 – the first issued by SGS in the UK Belfast’s Musgrave Park Hospital’s IT Business Unit has gained ISO 20000 certification, the first international standard for IT service management. Musgrave Park Hospital is managed by Belfast Health & Social Care Trust. “This is a great accolade for Musgrave Park Hospital, and for us, as it’s the first ISO 20000 certificate to be issued by SGS in the UK,” says SGS Certification Manager Northern Ireland, Mary Norton. Compliance with the ISO 20000 standard demonstrates an organisation’s commitment to a reliable IT infrastructure, strongly supported by in-house or outsourced IT professionals. It helps organisations to improve their performance, raise service quality and enhance their reputation among customers, employees, users and other stakeholders. It also helps to increase staff motivation, commitment and understanding of their responsibilities. “Wonderful achievement” Musgrave Park Hospital is only the second organisation in Northern Ireland to achieve certification to ISO 20000 standard. Stephen Beattie, ICT Manager at Belfast Health & Social Care Trust, says: “ISO 20000 certification is a wonderful achievement for all the staff concerned and demonstrates our ongoing commitment to delivering an IT service of the highest possible standard.” Why ISO 20000? “We already had ISO 9001 [quality management system] and ISO 27001 [information security management system] certification and wanted to augment this by achieving ISO 20000 certification,” says Stephen Beattie. “I wanted to ensure we weren’t only ‘talking the talk’ but actually ‘walking the walk’ in terms of our IT service.” Why SGS? Musgrave Park Hospital selected SGS to carry out its ISO 20000 assessment. “We chose SGS because we had already worked with this company for our other awards and it was one of the few companies that could provide assessment and certification on all the standards, and a local presence,” says Stephen Beattie. ISO 20000 assessment SGS has extensive experience of assessing service delivery around the world. It has a presence in 75 countries and issues 80,000 certificates a year. Mary Norton of SGS says: “The ISO 20000 certification audit at Musgrave Park Hospital included a thorough examination of the IT Business Unit’s service management policies and procedures and an on-site audit to verify implementation to the required standard.” Stephen Beattie says the assessment enabled Musgrave Park Hospital “to subject itself to the rigour of a stringent, external, independent audit and assessment and ensure service delivery aligned to best practice”. He says SGS’s assessor had a good understanding of Musgrave Park Hospital’s organisation and supported it by suggesting areas for improvement and giving examples of best practice elsewhere. “Many benefits” Stephen Beattie explains that ISO 20000’s “many benefits” include a formal framework for service planning, service delivery and service improvement, as well as a consistent, standard approach to introducing and managing change. He says: “ISO 20000 enables us to: adopt a more structured approach to managing the service, eliminating the ‘fire-fighting’ approach; raise service quality; and strengthen our reputation.” Continuous improvement Musgrave Park Hospital’s IT Business Unit’s ISO 20000 certification lasts from June 2007 to October 2009. During this period SGS carries out an audit every six months. These audits help the IT Business Unit to measure and monitor progress and further improve the efficiency and quality of its IT service management system and processes. Ends Notes for Editors: SGS is the global leader and innovator in inspection, verification, testing and certification services. Founded in 1878, SGS is recognised as the

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