On January 20, 2009 The Joint Commission announced that the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services’ (CMS) Hospital Compare Web site HCAHPS survey results will start being included on their hospital quality search site, www.qualitycheck.org. Thousands of healthcare consumers check this site each month to learn more about the performance of the Commission's 15,000 accredited member hospitals. The inclusion of HCAHPS scores will give more exposure to your facility's compliance with the Commission's patient safety goals and patient satisfaction results.

In November The Joint Commission released its Improving America's Hospitals: The Joint Commission Annual Report on Quality and Safety 2008. The report provides information on progress made towards 2007 National Patient Safety Goals (NPSGs) and provides an in-depth look into how its member hospitals have improved patient safety in key areas since 2002. The report provides detailed compliance information for 25 measures of care in areas including the treatment of: heart attack patients; heart failure patients; pneumonia patients; and surgical care.

The good news presented in this report is that the hospitals have "steadily improved the quality of care over the six year period." Statistically significant improvements were made in most areas. The Commission acknowledges that more patient safety improvement is needed. Performance of measures such as discharge instructions for heart failure patients and pneumococcal screening for pneumonia patients was still below acceptable levels. And the percentage of hospitals achieving 90% compliance on the measures reveal that there are still major improvements in care that can be made.

LifeWings Has The Programs, History, and Team To Help Your Hospital Improve Compliance With The Joint Commission Healthcare Quality Performance Measures and NPSGs

 

"If the Joint Commission rolls in here next week like they’re supposed to, I‘m going to be looking a lot better than I would have a month ago." Nurse, ED, Benedictine Hospital, Kingston, NY on improvements after LifeWings training.

The improvements made in the past six years and the report demonstrate that the methodology and tools that LifeWings clients have employed since 2001 work. Specifically our clients have achieved these dramatic results in areas cited by the  study:

 

 

Other key areas cited in the reports as having a significant impact on quality improvements are the areas that LifeWings programs address. Specifically our patient safety improvement programs help hospitals improve:

• Performance Measures - The report states that performance measurement and reporting correlate to improvements. They urge the continued focus on this area. Since 2001 LifeWings has helped clients identify areas to measure and helped them develop measurement tools. We measure the success of every project we do and the results help our clients improve their goodwill, stakeholder value, employee satisfaction, and more. We also help clients determine how to measure changes that affect HCAHPS survey results. In addition we now collaborate with an AHRQ Patient Safety Organization (PSO) to further assist clients in the critical process of sharing information.

• Hospital Culture - According to the report  "To assure safe health care environments, hospitals must continually analyze fundamental workflow systems and redesign those systems as needed. Hospitals must go beyond the tasks of removing a dangerous medication from a patient care unit or requiring a specific safety feature on a medical device. They must achieve goals such as “improve the accuracy of patient identification” by changing how individuals caring for patients do their jobs. Achieving this kind of behavioral change among providers takes time, motivation, reinforcement, reward, patience, and support.”  This is specifically the kind of holistic, sustainable change LifeWings programs enable. After learning new communication protocols and hardwiring new processes into their delivery, our clients report enthusiasm and "buy in" for an improved culture of safety.