It often feels as if the term “excellence” has lost a lot of its cultural currency. These days, the word is thrown around so casually and ubiquitously that it has become more of a buzzword than a true measure of exceptional performance.
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Located in the midst of rolling farm country, Hershey, Pa., lacked for farmers markets—or so Daniel George, assistant professor at Penn State College of Medicine's Hershey campus, found when he asked around.
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With 15% of American children overweight and another 15% on the cusp, OSF St. Anthony Medical Center in Rockford, Ill., has tightened its focus on education and outreach through the Children and Teens Choosing Health, or CATCH initiative, which began during the summer of 2012.
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Studies have shown that patients are 30% less likely to be readmitted or visit the emergency department if they understand their discharge instructions. And in October, the CMS began penalizing hospitals when Medicare patients are readmitted for what the agency deems to be avoidable reasons.
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Having the right personnel on hand and the right equipment in place enabled Tri-City Medical Center in Oceanside, Calif., to stabilize, diagnose and revive unconscious 3-day-old Caleb Peltier, who arrived by ambulance and presented with a critical congenital heart defect.The 330-bed hospital recognized an opportunity to formalize a new code—similar to the Code Pink many hospitals use for children under 14 who arrive with life-threatening conditions—designed to handle the particular circumstances endemic to infants 60 days old or younger.
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Since August 2011, the emergency department at Lake Cumberland Regional Hospital in Somerset, Ky., has put patients on a much faster track: Length of stay is down by more than 40 minutes; wait time for a physician is down from 48 to 12 minutes; the number of patients leaving before being seen (and against medical advice) is a fraction of 1%; volume has increased by 6%; and patient-satisfaction scores have hit an all-time high of 8.22 on a 10-point scale.
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Patient dissatisfaction with appointment wait times coupled with increasing surgical volume led New England Baptist Hospital to closely examine its pre-admission screening unit. The hospital worked to identify and eliminate roadblocks to greater efficiencies, aimed at reducing the average of 173 minutes patients spent in the unit.
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Many patients at the Cancer Center at 208-bed Good Samaritan Hospital in Kearney, Neb., either lack insurance and/or drive long distances to receive their care. In addition to the financial burdens of hospital bills, they struggle to cover their copayments on medications and the gas they need for transportation.
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New England Baptist Hospital, a 162-bed orthopedic facility in Boston, has long prided itself on its “legendary service.” But when the hospital dipped from the 99th percentile in patient satisfaction in mid-2011—the only time in the past five years—it re-tripled its efforts and now calls them “The Baptist Way.”
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The failure of dialysis patients to undergo treatments as often and as long as doctors recommend causes them to end up sicker and back in the hospital sooner, decreasing their quality of life and increasing healthcare costs. But the very process of going through dialysis brings on stress, pain, depression, sleeplessness and strained relationships—all of which work against compliance.
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After rates of compliance on hand hygiene declined from 2009 to 2010, Sycamore Shoals Hospital in Johnson City, Tenn., created a Hand Hygiene Team to scrub the facility's policies and practices. That team, in turn, launched the Bugs Under Medical Management to Eliminate Resistance program to remind everyone to wash their hands.
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