Public
American Hospital Association content that is available to the public and all website users.
In May 2011, the hospital was experiencing an increase in mislabeled specimens among the ED and other inpatient nursing units. The lab department started to keep track of these mislabeled specimens and senior leadership was informed. After discussion, education was formed on mislabeling of…
Failure to rescue is the failure to recognize or act upon the patient's decline in condition resulting in death or permanent disability. In the United States between 2004 and 2006, 128 of every 1,000 patient deaths were attributed to failure to rescue. Review of literature indicates that…
Patient safety is the number one priority at this facility. After discussing medication errors at a patient safety meeting, it was evident that there were multiple factors contributing to the data presented. Pharmacy, medical/surgical directors, clinical education and IT met and developed a med-…
The project improved the pharmacy to hospital floor Rx process to decrease returns, optimize automated functionality and reduce overtime. The result was an improvement in communication between all related departments including pharmacy, nursing and support departments, reducing barriers to problem…
Patients discharged to home waited an average of 3.5 hours to complete all of the necessary steps on the day of their discharge, from the time the physician told them they were going home to the time they left the inpatient unit. The goal was to reduce this time to less than 2 hours, based on…
Utilizing Six Sigma's DMAIC model, this project looked at ways to decrease errors in the documentation of bill-only items in the hospital's main OR. Bill-only items are items not held in the hospital's inventory and are brought in for use by third-party vendors. Due to the lack of a…
This project aimed to reduce the OR turnover time for total joint cases. Baseline data showed it took 36 minutes with a standard deviation of 20 minutes to turnover a room from incision close to incision open of the next case. Although multiple improvements were identified, the project team elected…
Evidence-based guidelines now support restrictive red blood cell transfusion practices to enhance patient safety and reduce costs while maintaining or improving patient outcomes, including all-cause mortality. Using Lean Six Sigma process improvement methodologies, a 500-bed tertiary medical center…
Sinai Health System, Chicago, “Helping Adults Breathe and Thrive: A Healthy Homes Approach to Improving Respiratory Health of Adults with Asthma.” In one year, the program reduced asthma-related emergency department visits by 66 PERCENT, hospitalizations by 57 percent and participants' daytime…
A unique telemedicine consultation between a rural hospital and skilled rehabilitation/nursing facility is dramatically reducing patient readmissions. Atlantic General Hospital, a 62-bed facility in Berlin, Md., discharges many patients to a local, privately owned post-acute care facility. In…