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Mountain Pacific Quality Health

Hospitals

 
 

2012 Quality Award Image

Mountain-Pacific Quality Health is proud to announce the winners of the 2012 Hospital Quality Awards. This is the eleventh year running for these awards, which recognize hospitals for their dedication to patient care. Each hospital showed a dedication to their patients by giving high quality care in the nationally measured project areas of heart failure, pneumonia, acute myocardial infarction, infections prevention and surgical complications. Mountain-Pacific will continue to work with Wyoming hospitals to make sure that every patients receives safest, highest quality care possible.

 

Four hospitals received the Quality Achievement Award—the highest award possible

  • Memorial Hospital Converse County, Douglas
  • Platte County Memorial Hospital, Wheatland
  • Washakie Medical Center, Worland
  • Wyoming Medical Center, Casper

Eight hospitals received the Commitment to Quality Award

  • Campbell County Memorial Hospital, Gillette
  • Cheyenne Regional Medical Center, Cheyenne
  • Banner Health Community Hospital, Torrington
  • Evanston Regional Hospital, Evanston
  • Lander Regional Hospital, Lander
  • Powell Valley Medical Center, Powell
  • Star Valley Medical Center, Afton
  • St. John’s Medical Center, Jackson


Central Line-Associated Bloodstream Infection (CLABSI) Requirement

The CLABSI measure assesses the rate of laboratory-confirmed cases of bloodstream infection among adult, pediatric, and neonatal intensive care unit (ICU) patients. It is a new requirement for the Hospital Inpatient Quality Reporting Program (Reporting Program, formerly known as the Reporting Hospital Quality Data for Annual Payment Update (RHQDAPU) FY 2013 payment determination.

Data collection period begins with January 2011 events. More information, including training and quick fact sheets on the CLABSI requirement can be found at QualityNet - Healthcare Associated Infections (CLABSI)

The National Healthcare Safety Network (NHSN) is a secure, internet-based surveillance system that integrates and expands legacy patient and healthcare personnel safety surveillance systems managed by the Division of Healthcare Quality Promotion (DHQP) at CDC. NHSN also includes a new component for hospitals to monitor adverse reactions and incidents associated with receipt of blood and blood products. Enrollment is open to all types of healthcare facilities in the United States, including acute care hospitals, long term acute care hospitals, psychiatric hospitals, rehabilitation hospitals, outpatient dialysis centers, ambulatory surgery centers, and long term care facilities. http://www.cdc.gov/nhsn/

On The CUSP: STOP HAI a national implementation of the Comprehensive Unit-based Safety Program to eliminate health care acquired infections.  Stop BSI and Stop CAUTI aim to eliminate central line associated blood stream infections (CLABSI) and catheter-associated urinary tract infections (CAUTI) and their associated costs. We invite consumers, insurers, employers, clinicians, and administrators to join this effort. Together we will save countless lives, prevent suffering, and reduce healthcare costs.  http://www.onthecuspstophai.org/

APIC – Association for Professionals in Infection Control & Epidemiology. APIC’s mission is to improve health and patient safety by reducing risks of infection and other adverse outcomes.  APIC advances its mission through education, research, consultation, collaboration, public policy, practice guidance and credentialing.  www.apic.org

SHEA – The Society for Healthcare Epidemiology of America. SHEA's mission is to prevent and control infections in healthcare settings.
The society is dedicated to advancing the science and practice of healthcare epidemiology and preventing and controlling morbidity, mortality, and the cost-of-care linked to healthcare-associated infections. http://www.shea-online.org/

The Infectious Diseases Society of America (IDSA) represents physicians, scientists and other health care professionals who specialize in infectious diseases. IDSA’s purpose is to improve the health of individuals, communities, and society by promoting excellence in patient care, education, research, public health, and prevention relating to infectious diseases. http://www.idsociety.org/Index.aspx

IHI – Institute for Healthcare Improvement. Healthcare-associated infections (HAIs) can be serious and even deadly for patients. Those who access the health care system for illness or injury are expecting care and treatment, not additional illness and complications, yet the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimates that 1 in 20 hospitalized patients develop an HAI. Treatment of HAIs can be difficult and may last for years, especially when the organism is resistant to multiple antibiotics. In addition to the human burden, excess costs are incurred across the health care system and many patients and payors are no longer willing to accept these avoidable costs. 

Transmission of organisms that cause HAIs can occur in many ways: caregiver-to-patient, environment-to-patient, or patient-to-patient. Programs that have been successful in reducing HAIs have made this a strategic imperative and generally focused on improving multiple interventions, such as hand hygiene, use of contact and other precautions, active screening, and robust decontamination rather than relying on a single approach. http://www.ihi.org/explore/HAI/Pages/default.aspx

CDC – Centers for Disease Control & Prevention

Healthcare-associated infections (HAI) are infections caused by a wide variety of common and unusual bacteria, fungi, and viruses during the course of receiving medical care.

Wherever patient care is provided, adherence to infection prevention guidelines is needed to ensure that all care is safe care. This includes traditional hospital settings as well as outpatient surgery centers, long-term care facilities, rehabilitation centers, and community clinics. The information on this website is intended to inform patients and healthcare personnel and help move healthcare systems toward elimination of HAIs. http://www.cdc.gov/hai/

Target BSI.  TargetBSI.com provides up to date and clinically relevant information on catheter-associated bloodstream infections. All clinicians who manage or monitor vascular access devices and related products and technology will find useful, practical infection prevention information here. http://www.targetbsi.com/

About Hospital Associated Infections:

An estimated 44,000 to 98,000 people die each year from medical errors, making patient safety one of the nation’s most pressing health care challenges.

  • There are 40,000 incidents of harm in U.S. hospitals every day.
  • Medical errors in American hospitals cause up to 98,000 deaths and more than one million injuries each year.
  • In the Medicare population alone, one in seven beneficiaries is harmed during the course of care, costing tax payers an estimated $4.4 billion a year.
  • Of Medicare patients discharged from the hospital, nearly one in five is readmitted within 30 days accounting for about 2.6 million seniors at a cost of over $26 billion every year.
  • Each year 100,000 patients in hospitals and nursing homes in this country die from infection they acquired after being in a health care facility.

Mountain-Pacific works with hospitals to address areas of patient harm for which there is evidence that safety can be improved by improving health care processes and systems.

Reducing Hospital-Acquired Infections
Hospital-acquired infections (HAIs) are on the rise. This is due in part to an increase of invasive procedures being performed and a growing resistance to antibiotics, but for the most part many hospital infections are preventable.

The costs of HAIs are many; HAIs have a significant impact not only on patient health and quality of life, they cause death (over 99,000 a year), increase readmissions and hospital lengths of stay (an average of 19 days) and substantially consume health care dollars (the cost of treating an infection acquired in the hospital is about $43,000 more than the original treatment cost).

In an all out effort to reduce the number of hospital-acquired infections, Mountain-Pacific will work with hospitals, and entire communities to improve processes and systems that will result in a decrease in the following hospital-acquired infections:

Central Line Associated Bloodstream Infections (CLABSIs)
As many as 248,000 bloodstream infections occur in hospitals across the U.S. every year. Many of these develop due to the use of a central vascular (or line) catheter. These infections are called central line-associated bloodstream infections, or CLABSIs. They are serious infections and usually result in longer hospital stays and are sometimes fatal.

CLABSIs can be prevented through proper management of the central line catheter, but takes collaboration and focus. Mountain-Pacific works with hospitals in Montana, Wyoming, Hawaii and Alaska to promote safer practices and strategies to reduce the incidence of these harmful infections.

Surgical site
Surgical site infections, or SSIs, are infections that develop within 30 days of an operation and are related to the surgery. Patients who develop SSIs need significantly more care, thereby increasing risk of illness, time spent in the hospital or an intensive care unit and costs to hospitals and patients.

The prevention of SSIs requires focusing on their causes. Mountain-Pacific collaborates with hospitals to develop surgical guidelines and procedures to reduce the occurrence of SSIs.

CAUTIs
Each year in the United States 90,000 people die as a result of an infection they acquired during their hospital stay.  Catheter-associated urinary tract infections (CAUTIs) are the most common cause of hospital-acquired infections.   According to some reports, more than 1 million cases of CAUTI occur each year in U.S. hospitals and nursing homes.  CAUTIs lengthen hospital stays and increase the costs of care—a single incident will add $500 to $1,000 to the direct costs of acute-care hospitalization.  Urinary catheters are inserted in more than 5 million patients per year. One out of four hospitalized patients will have a urinary catheter placed during their hospital stay and each day 5% of these patients will develop bacteria in their urine. The risk of a patient acquiring a CAUTI can be reduced by ensuring that catheters are inserted only when necessary, that they are placed using proper sterile techniques, that they are removed as soon as possible and that the closed sterile drainage system is maintained.

CDIs
Clostridium difficile infections (CDIs) can result from a hospital stay.  CDIs can cause symptoms ranging from diarrhea to life-threatening inflammation of the colon. People at risk for CDIs may have an illness that requires prolonged use of antibiotics. Increasingly, the disease is also spread, particularly among older adults, in the hospital. Each year, tens of thousands of people in the United States get sick from C. difficile, including some otherwise healthy people who aren't hospitalized or taking antibiotics.  Antibiotics are the course of treatment for CDIs.

Drug safety
Every year, 4.5 million patients are rushed to the emergency room due to medication side effects or errors. About 1.9 million of them are admitted into the hospital, and as many as 100,000 die. Adverse drug events (ADEs) are very common and hugely preventable. Patients 65 and older are two to three times more likely to experience ADEs when compared to younger patients. Mountain-Pacific is working to collaborate with pharmacists, clinicians, patients and patient advocates to improve health and safety by reducing the number of ADEs that occur every year.

Hospital Compare
The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) provides information on the quality of care given at many hospitals nationwide that have agreed to provide data on surgical infection prevention and heart attack, heart failure and pneumonia care. You can access this information and more at Hospital Compare, which is accessible at http://www.medicare.gov/. This resource can be helpful as you choose where to seek hospital care.  Discussions with your physician and other health care providers, family and friends should also provide you with useful information.

Our Partners:

Wyoming Hospital Association: http://www.wyohospitals.com

Wyoming Department of Health - Infectious Disease Epidemiology Program: http://www.health.wyo.gov/phsd/epiid/epiid.html