The main role of the Quality Council at SAk is to implement the hospital's quality policy, provide leadership in quality matters, and promote improved safety and work practices. This is achieved by considering:

• Recorded incidents, cases, and their consequences

• Findings from internal audits

• Findings from external audits

The Quality Council is also responsible for monitoring trends and developments in quality management, exploring new approaches, and driving progress in quality and improvement efforts.

The hospital in Akureyri has established a quality policy. The basis of the quality work is the patient and his relatives. With the quality policy, SAk sets the following goals:

• Meet the needs and expectations of clients.

• Provide clients with efficient and safe services.

• The quality manual is active and user-friendly.

• Ensure service regardless of organization form.

• Processes are tailored to the needs of patients and relatives.

• Interdisciplinary collaboration and teamwork are paramount.

• Work purposefully for continuous improvement.

• Monitor key aspects of the activities.

• Systematically react to deviations.

• Suppliers meet defined needs, quality requirements and quality standards.

• Employees are active participants in quality work.

• The hospital is accredited according to DNV –GL Healthcare and certified according to ISO 9001, 14001, 27001 and 45001.

• Comply with applicable requirements.

The CEO, executive board, medical staff and managers are responsible for the implementation of SAk's quality policy. With the hospital's quality work, it must be ensured that improvements and preventive measures taken within the institution are implemented, results are measured and their progress is monitored.

• Hulda Sigríður Ringsted, Director of Nursing

• Ragnheiður Halldórsdóttir, Director of Medical Services

• Birgitta Hafsteinsdóttir, Clinical Quality Manager

• Björn Gunnarsson, Clinical Quality Manager

• Hannes Bjarnason, Quality and Information Security Manager

The Akureyri hospital has international quality certification for its activities and is the first healthcare institution in Iceland to receive such certification.

The certification was initially granted at the end of 2015 and has now been renewed twice and is valid until the end of 2024. The certification agency is the international company DNV GL, which is one of the largest companies in this field in the world. Furthermore, SAk received certification for all its activities according to the ISO 9001:2015 standard in the spring of 2019, and after renewal in late 2021, that certification is valid until the first part of 2025.

The hospital also has international certification according to the information security standard ISO 27001, which was initially awarded in 2019 and was renewed in autumn 2021. The auditor is BSI (British Standard Institution) in Iceland. This standard frames all work related to the management of information security in the hospital.

The hospital received equal pay certification ÍST 85:2012 at the beginning of 2020 and this certification is valid for 3 years, but the certification body is BSI (British Standard Institution) UK. The main goal of equal pay certification is to combat the gender pay gap and promote gender equality in the labor market.