Learning From Each Other and Making Improvements

Last Wednesday I had the opportunity to spend a day with the teams that were part of our nine-month long improvement collaborative at their third and final learning session. The collaborative followed the format from the Institute for Healthcare Improvement, providing the teams with an opening learning session to teach the basic tools needed to define their goals, a mid-stream collaborative meeting to demonstrate early results, and a concluding meeting where final results were presented. Some of the results presented at this final meeting were just outstanding.

A team from Gilchrist Hospice Care worked to improve family members’ feelings of competency at the time of loved one’s death and generated marvelous results.

The Surgical Site Infection team, which was challenged to reduce the number of surgical site infections experienced by colorectal patients, has made significant changes and is well on its way.

The Falls team also had fantastic results in standardizing the work of protecting high falls risk inpatients. Prior to the collaborative and the implementation of the standardized process, the patient falls rate was 2.5 falls per 1,000 patient days. This rate was based on four units - U34, U35, U37, and U58. After implementing standardized processes on these units, the falls rate decreased to 1.78 per 1,000 patient days and we continue to drive the rate down.

Other collaborative teams included patient satisfaction and communication, a team to decrease the incidence of hospital-acquired pressure ulcers, one that focused on reducing employee injuries, as well as a team to improve the cleanliness of patient rooms.

Like everything we do, the ultimate goal of this collaborative work is to move us closer to our vision of providing the care we would want for our own loved ones to everyone, every time.

And, on June 5, we honor those individuals who have brought our vision to life by providing the highest level of care for our patients at the annual Compassionate Caregiver Awards ceremony. I thank and appreciate our staff members who embody our vision.