05/30/07, Community Memorial Hospital Receives VHA Leadership Award for Clinical Excellence
Community Memorial Hospital has been presented a 2007 VHA Leadership Award for Clinical Excellence, honoring the hospital for meeting or exceeding national performance standards for clinical care in specific areas. Community Memorial won the award for its performance at the 90 percent or above level on clinical core measures for surgical complications and infection prevention.
The hospital was honored at the national health care alliance’s leadership conference in Denver on May 20.
“Community Memorial Hospital is dedicated to increasing the use of evidence-based care processes in an effort to make surgery safer and reduce surgical complications and adverse patient outcomes,” President and CEO David W. Felton. “This national award recognizes the power of several departments working together at Community Memorial to produce better outcomes for our patients.”
VHA Inc. serves more than 2,400 health care organizations nationwide, including 1,400 hospitals. VHA reviewed the performance of its members in 2006 and 264 member hospitals won Clinical Excellence awards for achievements in at least one of six clinical categories:
- treatment for heart attack patients
- prevention of surgical infections
- treatment for congestive heart failure
- implementation of rapid response teams
- prevention of blood stream infections
- treatment for pneumonia patients
“At the heart of the covenant between patients and hospitals lies the belief that clinical excellence is paramount,” said Trent Haywood, M.D., J.D., chief medical officer at VHA. “Community Memorial is a shining example of what can be achieved when a hospital’s actions are guided by the pursuit of clinical excellence.”
In the autumn of 2004, Community Memorial Hospital’s senior leadership discussed surgical complication statistics in a Medical Executive Committee meeting. Based on the data, it was decided improvements could be made and a course of action was charted.
First, Infection Control Practitioner Heather Bernard went to the Division of Surgery with supporting research from Surgical Infection Prevention Guideline Writers Workgroup and information from chart reviews by Medical Records. It was decided to have the circulating nurse start pre-operative antibiotics to ensure they would be administered within 60 minutes of incision.
The Division of Surgery was further convinced, on the basis of available data, that discontinuing antibiotics within 24 hours of the surgical end time would lessen complications and prevent emergence of resistant organisms.
Infection control, Post Anesthesia Care Unit nursing and the pharmacy all are involved in communicating and adhering to the time table and increasing the percentage of good outcomes.
