Dr Alvin Chang is the Director, Department of Quality, Safety and Risk Management (QSRM) and Senior Consultant, Department of Neonatology, KK Women’s and Children’s Hospital (KKH). He co-chairs the Hospital Quality and Patient Safety Standards (HQPSS) committee where he pioneered work to contextualise the Joint Commission International (JCI) standards applicable to KKH. These led to a change in mindset on accreditation survey as a means for continuous improvement, rather than an ‘examination’. His experience in this led to his involvement in the Ministry of Health Ensure Safer System (MOH-ESS) initiative riding on the contextualised JCI standards to be applied to hospitals in Singapore. He is an MOH-ESS Leader representing KKH and contributed to the various national workgroups- contextualise standards, MOH-ESS handbook, Accreditation Manager Program (AMP) Standardized Tracers within MOH etc. Prior to this, Dr Chang served as the Faculty Member and Improvement Advisor for the Singapore Healthcare Improvement Network (SHINe), a collaborative program with Institute for Healthcare Improvement (IHI) which resulted in reduction of harm in patients nationally.
He chairs the KKH Patient Safety and Risk Council and is a Patient Safety Champion. Dr Chang conducts regular Root Cause Analysis (RCA) workshops and Speak Up for Safety seminars in KKH and at the SingHealth DUKE-NUS Institute for Patient Safety and Quality (IPSQ). He had done work in areas of safety culture within KKH and contributed to the SingHealth cluster in crafting materials and conducting workshops in TeamSpeak and TeamChoice.
Dr Chang led a team from the Neonatal department using quality improvement tools to reduce the incidents of chronic lung diseases of infancy in year 2013. This project won awards and started the continuous improvement journey in the NICU to further improve the outcomes of high-risk preterm infants. He is the President of the Singapore Paediatric Society and an EXCO of the Healthcare Quality Society of Singapore. He had published a Cochrane review on neonatal transport and other scientific papers in various peer-reviewed journals locally and internationally on a range of quality, safety and neonatal-related topics. He is one of the few recognised Neonatal Resuscitation Instructors certified by the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) based in Singapore.
Dr Chang had also been involved in training and facilitation of healthcare systems in the region. This included Neonatal Resuscitation Training in Indonesia in 2011 and Quality and Patient safety workshops in India and Myanmar in 2016 and 2019 respectively. He is involved in his capacity as a Clinical Consultant to the Ministry of Health, Maldives in setting up, training and conduct of healthcare accreditation standards together with a team from the SingHealth DUKE-NUS IPSQ.
Professional Appointments
Committee Memberships
Neonatal Departmental Committees:
Institutional Committees:
SingHealth Cluster / Ministry of Health
Professional Bodies/Societies: