But, for many, the pain is not. No one enjoys the thought of getting a shot, and Risk and Quality Managers also wince at the need to track their organization’s vaccination screening compliance – most systems are a hassle. There’s no need to worry anymore.
We’ve taken the pain out of compliance tracking with our easy-to-use Influenza Vaccination Screening Compliance Worksheet addition to ActionCue Clinical Intelligence.
Although the rates of infection have steadily decreased over the past few years, still approximately 75,000 deaths were attributed to hospital-acquired infections in 2011, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
There are measures that can be taken to lower infection rates which are surprisingly easy.
Red blood cell (RBC) transfusion strategies are a common treatment in the U.S. But, infection rates dropped by 20 percent when hospitals performed them less often.
It is the simplest one on the list, and a shock that it even needs to be on here. Yet, a large enough portion of healthcare workers resist the practice that it bears constant reminding.
This is a shameless plug because it works. Other industries have adopted information technologies to dramatically improve their quality, Healthcare is no different.
A study at Case Western Reserve University School of Medicine found that a dedicated and educated housekeeping team reduced room infection by 89% of baseline.
A study published in the May 2013 issue of Infection Control and Epidemiology found that copper surfaces reduced the amount of health care-acquired infections by more than half.
I didn’t until I wrote this article. Find out more information by visiting the globalhandwashing.org website.
Hospital CEOs today bare an enormous weight of increasing healthcare quality and performance, while at the same time reducing costs. It is an overwhelming task for even seasoned healthcare executives — one that is made more difficult for many new CEOs who are just starting out and are battling age, and experience gaps.
In an exclusive interview with FierceHealthcare, Nicholas R. Tejeda, CEO of Doctors Hospital of Manteca (Calif.), a 73-bed facility affiliated with the Tenet Healthcare Corporation, talks about his own experience with experience-related perceptions, and offers some excellent leadership advise to hospital executive who find themselves in similar situations.
In the article, Tejeda offers this:
Though his comments were in response to issues facing younger executives, this is excellent advice, regardless of age or experience level. Engaging with staff to learn, and build trust is more important now than ever before.
With the number of changes and demands on healthcare facilities from both insurances and government entities, hospital staff is increasingly overwhelmed, and look to their leadership to chart a course through to calmer seas and better patient care. To help get there, CEOs should be willing to look for the insight and experience of their staff.
A recent New Jersey Supreme Court ruling has concluded that hospitals’ internal review reports written after adverse events occur should remain private. But, that doesn’t mean hospitals should not be tracking and reporting adverse events.
Under the ruling, the Valley Hospital of Ridgewood, New Jersey is allowed to keep secret a memo that was written after a roundtable discussion, following events that led to a 2007 malpractice suit alleging a newborn suffered brain damage as a result of negligent care during birth.
In the 4-3 majority ruling, the court said, “[t]he Legislature included in the Patient Safety Act a provision creating an absolute privilege. It reasoned that healthcare professionals and other facility staff are more likely to effectively assess adverse events in a confidential setting, in which an employee need not fear recrimination for disclosing his or her own medical error, or that of a colleague.”
The 2004 Patient safety Act, the Supreme Court was referring to, ensures the confidentiality of healthcare workers in order for them to be more forthcoming when a hospital error is made. Without this provision, hospital staff are less likely to report an adverse event for fear of being held liable. Doctors and nurses should feel they are protected, without the threat of reprisal, to share all information surrounding a bad outcome — allowing for timely and accurate incident reporting.
Timely and accurate incident reporting is essential to improving patient care by identifying adverse event trends due to bad practices, poor planning, or insufficient training. A study from the Journal of Patient Safety calculated the annual toll of preventable deaths due to medical errors in hospitals at as many as 440,000. The finding did not include tens of thousands more who die outside of hospitals from medical mistakes such as drug or diagnostic errors.
It can easily be argued that, in a hospital environment conducive to efficient incident reporting — where all staff feel secure to participate in a culture of quality — and with a robust, integrated Risk, Quality and Performance Improvement program, a large number of those 1,000 deaths per day are preventable.
October 19-25 is National Healthcare Quality Week, that time when we acknowledge the hard work and dedication of Quality staff all across the country. During the hustle and bustle of a normal day at any hospital, the efforts of these faithful folks can be easily overlooked. But, behind the scenes, these unsung heroes help to keep patients safe, and strive to continually improve the quality of care hospitals and healthcare organizations provide.
The National Association for Healthcare Quality (NAHQ) has provided some materials to help you host your own celebration of HQW, including Posters, and customizable templates for Lunch and Learn presentations and Press Releases.
So, for all they do… we at Prista would like to say to all of the Quality Professionals out there, “Thank You!” and we encourage you all to do the same.
For additional information on HQW visit the NAHQ website.
ActionCue subscribers are so amazed by the results they are talking about it. To find out how much easier Quality and Patient Safety can be get a demo of the healthcare industry’s leading patient safety software today.