Dr Dena van den Bergh is currently Director of Quality Leadership at Netcare Ltd where she is 
responsible for the development and implementation of the group quality and clinical leadership strategies and programmes across all 54 hospitals as well as Netcare 911, Primary Care Division, NRC an Oncology. She also serves on the Board of National Renal Care and the Clinical Governance Board of BMI Healthcare the Netcare UK hospital operations comprising 57 acute care private hospitals.
Her 30-year career has spanned a wide variety of healthcare leadership positions including over 17 years in executive leadership roles in multi-hospital healthcare organisations in South Africa and internationally.
Her academic record includes a doctoral degree in Engineering from Warwick University in the UK, a master’s degree in Pharmacology and an honours degree in Pharmacy. Dena is passionate about leading large scale change and improvement in healthcare using leading edge transformation methods to empower and engage stakeholders. She has been a member of the Board of the Hospital Association of South Africa (HASA) and has played an active role in public-private health systems improvement by serving in a variety of National Department of Health (NDOH) Task teams over her career.
Dena is a co-founder of the public–private collaborative quality improvement campaign Best Care Always, in partnership with the international Institute for Healthcare Improvement (IHI). She is a member of the SA Antibiotic Stewardship Program (SAASP), a national response to preserving antibiotics and addressing the risk of multi-drug resistant infections. Outside of work, Dena is an internationally certified coach, and a yoga teacher. She is married and has two children aged 18 and 17 and enjoys spending time in nature with her family.
Dena van den Bergh’s presentation title and abstract:
Best Care … Always! Building a movement of frontline improvement leaders in SA healthcare.
This presentation will share the journey of strengthening quality improvement capability in SA healthcare through a unique collaboration of frontline leaders in the public and private sector. Initially aimed at spreading a specific set of improvement initiatives to reduce healthcare associated infections in hospitals, the Best Care … Always! Campaign has evolved to become a platform for bringing together healthcare professionals and managers in the health system to explore new approaches to create change and improvement in health systems. The process and outcomes of both the initial campaign and subsequent impact of building a movement of frontline change leaders will be discussed through examples from real-world testing and implementation.