| October 20, 2010 | For More Information Contact: Andy Van Pelt 503-479-6018 |
Oregon Hosptials Collaborate for Health Care Quality Week
October 17-23, 2010
Oregon’s 58 community hospitals are collectively committed to providing high-quality patient care within their facilities. Under the leadership of the Oregon Association of Hospitals and Health Systems (OAHHS), hospitals have participated in the development of a long-term statewide work plan that addresses health care quality issues facing our communities and the patients we serve. The association provides a collaborative working environment, with both internal and external health care stakeholders, to leverage the opportunities available to initiate meaningful change.
“Achieving clinical quality is all about understanding a patient’s experience in terms of safety, timeliness, effectiveness, efficiency, equity and patient-centered care. The goal is to decrease variation in both processes and outcomes,” said Diane Waldo, director of quality and clinical services. “Our organization is committed to helping our member hospitals learn from one another and from outside industry experts to achieve consistent clinical quality across their organizations. To do so, OAHHS has established a board-level quality committee and strategic work plan dedicated to evaluating programs and procedures within our hospitals to make sure we are making the most of the evidenced-based, best practices available.”
OAHHS’ hospital quality and education program has grown significantly in the past three years. Current programs include:
- LEAN Transformation Collaborative: LEAN is a process design that aims to increase efficiency and lower cost. It has been used successfully in the manufacturing sector worldwide. OAHHS is leading a LEAN collaborative focused particularly on small and rural hospitals. The aims of this collaborative are to reduce health care costs by increased efficiencies and streamlined processes over time, while driving up the value and quality of the health care being delivered.
- Hand Hygiene: OAHHS has developed and deployed a nationally-recognized campaign aimed at empowering patients to ask their care providers if they have washed or sanitized their hands. Hand hygiene is the single most important factor in preventing the spread of infection.
- STOP BSI: In partnership with Johns Hopkins University, the American Hospital Association and the Michigan Hospital Association, OAHHS is the state lead in a collaborative to address central line associated blood stream infections (CLABSI) for hospitals participating in the project.
- Hospital Quality Network Initiatives: In partnership with the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, OAHHS is the state lead for three distinct initiatives including: reducing readmissions for patients with Congestive Heart Failure (CHF) increasing hospital emergency Department “throughput” or patient flow, and Improving Language Services for the patients of hospitals enrolled in the project.
- Safe Surgery Checklist: Modeled after the World Health Organization (WHO) safe surgery checklist, a majority of our hospital members have implemented a standardized surgical checklist as an evidenced-based best practice to address consistent patient safety in the operating room. The use of this checklist mirrors the process that pilots utilize in the cockpit before during and after flight.
- Overhead Emergency Codes: In collaboration with the Washington State Hospital Association, hospitals in Oregon have adopted standardized overhead emergency codes to reduce confusion and miscommunication among staff and physicians who may work across numerous facilities.
- Color-coded Alert Wrist Bands: Hospitals in Oregon have adopted a standard set of color-coded alert patient wristbands to indicate patient allergy, patients at risk for fall, restricted extremity , and do not resuscitate orders. As with overhead emergency codes, this simple process ensures continuity across staff and physicians who may work across numerous facilities.
- The MDRO Toolkit: OAHHS has developed a step-by-step toolkit for hospitals to use to address consistent infection prevention strategies against multi-drug resistant organisms.
“We provide a safe table for an ongoing dialogue around the health care quality issues that our members and external health care stakeholders are dealing with,” Waldo continued. “Hospitals in Oregon cannot solve these problems alone, but depend on the community and the patients to be active participants in the health care they receive.”
For more information about these programs and other quality programs being conducted through the hospital association, go online to www.oahhs.org/quality
Building 2, Suite 100
Lake Oswego, Oregon 97035
503-636-2204 | Fax: 503-636-8310
info@oahhs.org
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