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In 2005, the neonatal intensive care unit at Women and Children's Hospital of West Virginia experienced a ventilator-associated pneumonia incidence rate of 18 percent for infants weighing less than 1,500 grams. The incidence rate was 50 percent higher than the baseline standard of the Vermont…
The Problem More than one million serious medication errors occur each year in U.S. hospitals. The IOM attributes at least $3.5 billion in extra costs a year to such errors, not counting lost wages and productivity. About 10 years ago, Winthrop administrative and clinical leaders began an…
The Problem Like many hospitals, Westmoreland struggled with significant ED crowding and patient boarding. From December 2008 through February 2009, there were 2,519 inpatient admissions from the ED. The average time from the decision to admit a patient to when the patient was admitted to an…
The Problem Vanderbilt's project didn't address a problem so much as it focused on a goal: to become the safest hospital in the United States. It decided to focus on medication errors, which harm at least 1.5 million patients in U.S. hospitals each year and cost $3.5 billion annually, the…
The Problem Inefficiencies in the fast track at Thomas Jefferson University Hospital have long been a source of frustration for ED leaders, staff and patients. Between December 2008 and February 2009, there were 1,759 fast track patients and the average length of stay was 122 minutes. ED leaders…
The Problem The average ED length of stay was 413 minutes (6 hours, 53 minutes). Fourteen percent of ED patients left before being seen, 40 percent of these had waited more than four hours. The hospital was losing about $7 million in revenue annually as a result. The Solution
The Problem Severe sepsis is one of the most significant challenges in critical care. Although Stony Brook's sepsis mortality rate of 26.7 percent was below the national average, reducing these deaths became a priority to enhance critical care. Additionally, Margaret Parker, MD, SBUMC's…
Ten years ago, the Institute of Medicine shocked the health care field and the general public with its seminal report, To Err is Human: Building a Safer Health System (1999), in which it estimated that as many as 98,000 people may die each year from preventable harm in hospitals. Its follow-up…
As a result of care coordination activities with Medicare patients, the opportunity to improve patient understanding and involvement in their health care and the realization that many of these patients needed additional support and information concerning medication management, led the organization…