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Working to Improve Care

We use these quality measures and others to help us identify opportunities to improve our care. As of the first quarter of 2005, we have identified the following areas as needing improvement, and we’d like you to know what we’re doing to accomplish those improvements:

For Pneumonia Patients

Improvement Area

Hospital Action Steps
Starting antibiotics within four hours of arrival to hospital. Our Emergency Department physicians and nurses implemented a new process to accelerate the assessment and treatment of potential pneumonia patients, to enable earlier administration of antibiotics.
Providing advice about quitting smoking. We revised our process and now our Respiratory Therapists are providing prompt counseling regarding smoking cessation, for our patients who smoke.
Providing pneumococcal vaccination before leaving hospital, if needed. We established a process for our nurses to assess patients upon admission to determine if the vaccine is needed, and to administer the vaccine for those patients who need it.

For Heart Failure Patients

Improvement Area

Hospital Action Steps
Providing advice about quitting smoking. We revised our process and now our Respiratory Therapists are providing prompt counseling regarding smoking cessation for our patients who smoke.
Providing discharge instructions which include information on activity level, diet, discharge medications, follow up appointment, weight monitoring and what to do if symptoms worsen. In collaboration with our physicians, pharmacists, nursing staff and former patients, we have redesigned our Discharge Instructions form to allow for improved documentation and clearer instructions for your care after discharge.

For Heart Attack Patients

Hospital Action Steps
Our current performance levels in the care of heart attack patients are very good, and are consistently above state averages. We will continue to monitor and maintain our performance.

Other Important Actions We’re Taking to Improve the Safety and Quality of Your Care:

We strive to remain on the cutting edge, in terms of providing the safest care and the best clinical outcomes. Here are some examples of other patient safety and performance improvement initiatives currently underway at Shady Grove Adventist Hospital:

  • 5 Million Lives Campaign – We have joined with the Institute for Healthcare Improvement (IHI) in a nationwide program aimed at improving the safety of hospital care. We’ve made a commitment to implement changes in care that have been proven to prevent avoidable deaths. We have already implemented the following interventions, aimed at saving lives and reducing patient injuries:
    • Deploy Rapid Response Teams
    • Deliver Reliable, Evidence-Based Care for Acute Myocardial Infarction
    • Prevent Adverse Drug Events (ADEs)
    • Prevent Central Line Infections
    • Prevent Surgical Site Infections
    • Prevent Ventilator-Associated Pneumonia
    • Prevent Harm from High-Alert Medications
    • Reduce Surgical Complications
    • Reduce Methicillin-Resistant Staphylococcus Aureus (MRSA) Infection
    • Deliver Reliable, Evidence-Based Care for Heart Failure
    • Prevent Pressure Ulcers

Here are some of the specific systems we have in place to help us keep our patients safe:

  • Safe Medication Administration - We implemented an electronic bar coding system to improve the accuracy and safety of medications. With our new system, the nurses use a bedside scanner to identify the patient and the medication, and a computer to check the accuracy of our medication administration.

  • Rapid Response Team - We developed a Rapid Response Team, or “RRT”, which is a team of specially trained healthcare providers who respond immediately to any patient whose condition becomes unstable. The purpose of the Rapid Response Team is to improve the health and outcomes of our patients. The RRT does this by assessing the patient’s symptoms and providing immediate interventions that are normally provided in the critical care setting. The team can be called at anytime by any staff member who deems it necessary.

  • Patient Education - We provide education to our patients which encourages them to Speak Up! This program is aimed at helping our patients become more involved in their healthcare and decision-making. Learn More About Our Speak Up Campaign

  • Safe Care in the Intensive Care Unit - Our Adult Intensive Care Unit participates in the Maryland Patient Safety Center’s ICU Collaborative. This effort is aimed a decreasing and eliminating some of the more common complications that can and do occur in an ICU setting, such as pneumonia in patients who are on a ventilator, or blood stream infections in patients who must have IVs in larger blood vessels. Although complications of critical care have been fairly common across the country in the past, we are committed to reducing and eliminating them in our ICU.

  • Creating a Culture of Safety - We’re providing special training to all our physicians and employees to help them provide an even safer patient environment.

    • Safe Haven is our training program for all staff, and is aimed at increasing awareness of patient safety issues that arise during hospitalization.

    • Human Factors Team Training, provided specifically for our physicians and clinical staff, focuses on the importance of communication between care providers in order to prevent errors. This training and the techniques which are learned are based on concepts used by the airline industry, which dramatically improved the safety of air travel in the past several decades.