Washing hands is not a regulated procedure in many foreign hospitals, said Charles Cummings, vice president for medical affairs at Johns Hopkins Medicine International.
Part of the mission of Hopkins International, a division of Hopkins Medicine, is to spread such medical standards around the world, Cummings said.
"What you really have to do is change the culture of the medical staff as well as the administrative staff so that it is compatible with Hopkins procedures," he said. "There's an established way a hospital performs and treats patients, and what we have to do is change the standards and methods of operation such that their standards match ours."
Recently, Hopkins International has developed relationships with two hospitals in the Middle East, working with both to ensure stringent standards in medical care, research, and patient relations.
The Clemenceau Medical Center, the first Hopkins-affiliated hospital in the Middle East, first opened its doors just over a month ago in Beirut, Lebanon. It is already poised to become the first accredited hospital in the region, its level of technology comparable to the best modern facilities in the West, Cummings said.
"Accreditation is really a demanding set of hoops that a hospital has to go through in everything from patient safety and treatment to medical records to laboratories," he said.
To put the Clemenceau Center on its path toward accreditation, Pamela Paulk, vice president of Human Resources at the Johns Hopkins Hospital, headed a team that traveled to Beirut to help set up human resources policies and practices.
"We basically reviewed the human resources from soup to nuts," Paulk said. "We can help local organizations provide better and more efficient health care by consulting on clinical or administrative practices and showing them what we have learned in our approximately 100 year history."
The Clemenceau Medical Center was established to be a referral center for specialized treatment in the region. Previously, patients from the region had to go abroad to receive modern treatment.
Now those with "higher-intensity" illnesses, such as unique eye disorders or complicated deliveries, can go to a hospital closer to home, Cummings said.
Hopkins International has also begun a ten-year relationship managing a hospital in Abu Dhabi in the United Arab Emirates.
Although Hopkins International has previously affiliated with hospitals all over the world, from Turkey to Panama to Singapore, this is the first time it has decided to fully administer a foreign hospital.
Edward Miller, the CEO of Hopkins Medicine, said that the decision to manage the hospital in Abu Dhabi was motivated by strategic concerns.
"We want to have an international vision," Miller said. "We want to be not just a national hospital, but committed to bringing healthcare worldwide."
"No matter what you think about the war, I think we all believe that there are some good things about America. So this is a way to show some of those good things about us and to bolster our reputation in the region."
The General Authority for Health Services in the United Arab Emirates, a local government body in Abu Dhabi, asked Hopkins to oversee the operations of its 469-bed Tawam hospital.
"The big trick is to decide with whom you should work with abroad," Miller said. "If they're just trying to buy the name, that's not on the table; we don't do that."
"But if it's meaningful for our company to be involved, if it's something where we feel we can really bring expertise to a particular problem, then we want to help."
Steve Thompson, the CEO of Hopkins International, said that the primary aim of the organization is to improve health care around the world in a different way.
"Hopkins for its entire life has impacted health care everywhere, but with JHI we're trying to create a more sustainable model of health care improvement.
"We're trying to build institutional relationships between medical organizations around the world."
Thompson said that the Hopkins project in Beirut has brought a "fundamentally different" model of health care to Lebanon.
"So now Beirut is not only a destination for holidays, shopping, and commerce in the Middle East. It's a destination for health care."
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