Throughout the month of August, we have been focusing on the first of the three main hospital goals: Improving Patient Outcomes.
To help communicate the objectives of this goal, we broke it down into three subjects:
- Patient Progression
- Quality & Patient Safety
- Patient Satisfaction
This week, Diane McGraw, quality director, explains the importance of quality and patient safety.
Patient safety is a top priority for the hospital and includes various outcomes such as mortality, readmissions, hospital-acquired infections, surgical site infections, and patient safety indicators.
Some of the quality and patient safety initiatives we have implemented are:
- Turning patients to prevent pressure ulcers
- Using mats to prevent fall injuries
- Education on correct hand hygiene methods
- Introducing a palliative care doctor to reduce mortality rates
The hospital is reviewed by CMS-Medicare/Medicaid and other agencies like Vizient, to ensure we are meeting certain patient safety criteria.
In addition to keeping our hospital safe for patients, the better the hospital performs during these reviews, the better scores we receive, resulting in higher reimbursements from CMS.
Every employee plays an integral role in ensuring quality and patient safety. You are the backbone of each and every initiative. Without you we cannot ensure a safe, loving, and caring environment for our patients. We all work together to achieve our goal of ensuring patient safety and making our hospital the best place a patient can come to for their care.
Going to the education boot camps, continuing educational endeavors, and attending the meetings that discuss some of these issues all broaden our vision and help us understand and achieve more.
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