Modern Healthcare congratulates the winners and honorable mentions of the 16th annual Spirit of Excellence Awards, co-sponsored by Sodexo Health Care Services. This year’s winners and runners-up are profiled on the following pages. Each of the five winners will receive a cash prize of $5,000, and each of the five honorable mentions will receive a $1,500 cash prize. Read more about the the winners and honorable mentions
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The food and nutrition services staff at the Memorial Hermann Prevention and Recovery Center, a drug and alcohol treatment facility in Houston, once did less than they could have to further its mission: to make patients feel loved, accepted and worthwhile so they could work toward continued sobriety and recovery.
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The lack of consistent pain-management protocols was putting the hurt on patient-satisfaction scores at 152-bed East Tennessee Children’s Hospital, a Knoxville-based facility that provided care for more than 70,000 kids in its last fiscal year.On May 1, the facility implemented a user-friendly pain card in the triage area of the emergency department that enables young patients to rate their pain level from zero—a smiley face with “no hurt”—to 10, a crying, frowning face that says “hurts worst.”
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Two lives have been saved, and more than 250 automated electronic defibrillators, or AEDs, have been purchased to save others, since the St. Vincent Health Center, Erie, Pa., began Project Heart Start in 1999.Knowing that the chances of survival for those who suffer sudden cardiac arrest plunge 7% to 10% for every minute without treatment—and that the average emergency response time is eight to 12 minutes—442-bed St. Vincent has sold these devices at a volume-based discount to businesses, churches, schools and community centers.
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The combination of patients not taking charge of their regimens and the vagaries of Medicare reimbursement policies too often result in home-based chronic care that cyclically morphs into expensive acute care as diseases progress and spike.
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In the 3½ years since 502-bed Manatee Memorial Hospital, Bradenton, Fla., focused on quality-improvement measures in stroke care, the facility has achieved a number of enviable results along the way to becoming accredited as a primary stroke center by the Joint Commission.
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Members of the American Academy of Orthopaedic Surgeons, based in Rosemont, Ill., treat the kinds of musculoskeletal injuries that result from accidents because of old, unsafe playground treatment.For the past nine years, the academy has built a 3,000- to 6,000-square-foot playground in one day at the site of its annual meeting, as part of its ongoing Prevent Injuries America campaign. A few additional “builds,” conducted in concert with the KaBoom not-for-profit organization, have left a total of 12 such playgrounds in nine states and Puerto Rico.
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Eight years ago, St. Francis Medical Center, a 145-bed regional facility in Grand Island, Neb., struggled to keep enough staff to meet patients’ needs, and some needed to be turned away from the hospital, leading physicians to consider moving their practices.The center began closely tracking metrics like jobs not filled, turnover rate, average number of applicants per open position, conflicts among employees and job-satisfaction rates, none of which provided especially encouraging news.Read about...
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Rivington House, a 206-bed skilled-nursing facility in New York for people living with HIV/AIDS, introduced a leadership training institute in 2006 to boost lagging job satisfaction among employees. To provide an improved environment for workers who handle a patient population rife with mental illness and substance-abuse issues, managers have received classroom training and executive coaching, instruction on goal-setting and a review of best practices.
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Nearly 5,000 children from 32 states and four countries with 171 different etiologies have been treated at the 8-year-old Center for Pediatric Feeding & Swallowing at St. Joseph’s Children’s Hospital in Paterson, N.J.These patients, who have achieved or exceeded 88% of their goals on average, face challenges related to the volume, texture and variety of foods, and many are not gaining sufficient weight, says William Roche, clinical director. For its successes in helping them, St. Joseph’s has received the 2008 Spirit of Excellence Award in the C.A.R.E.S. category.
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Organizations ranging from the Los Angeles Regional Foodbank to the Salvation Army to local homeless shelters have received armies of volunteers thanks to a focused employee volunteering effort undertaken in early 2007 by KP California, the Southern California regional branch of Kaiser Permanente.
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