GSHCS Touts Patient Safety Improvements

Northeast Oregon Now
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Good Shepherd Health Care System (GSHCS) announced on Friday patient safety improvements as a result of participation in the Partnership for Patients (PfP) initiative, a nationwide collaborative effort to reduce the number of hospital-acquired conditions by 40 percent and hospital readmissions by 20 percent.

GSHCS Patient Safety
Pictured is part of the team that has helped lead the way toward reducing patient harm and preventing readmissions. Pictured Top Row Left to Right: Lucas Bradshaw RN, Emergency Services Manager, Devin Goldman, Customer Experience and Quality Coordinator, Jason Noble, Acute Care Services Manager; Front Row: Karene Bejarano, Quality Nurse, Theresa Brock, VP of Nursing and Patient Care Executive, Kyle Furukawa, Family Birth Center Manager.
PHOTO COURTESY OF GSHCS
“We joined Partnership for Patients with the knowledge that collaboration among our peers could yield extraordinary improvement in patient safety,” said GSHCS Patient Care Executive Theresa Brock. “The goals of Partnership for Patients align with our mission and longstanding commitment to making hospital care safer, more reliable and less costly. We are extremely proud of our progress toward reducing harm to patients and preventing readmissions, and we will continue to cultivate a culture of safety on behalf of those who come to us for care.”

  • Patient safety improvements include:
  • Zero central line-associated blood stream infections (CLABSI).
  • Zero early elective deliveries before 39 weeks of gestation when not medically necessary.
  • Reduction in patient falls with injury.
  • Zero post-operative pulmonary embolisms or deep vein thrombosis events.
  • Reduction in patients who acquire clostridium difficile colitis (c. diff), which is inflammation of the colon.

 

The Oregon Association of Hospitals and Health Systems, as part of the American Hospital Association and Health Research & Educational Trust Hospital Engagement Network, led local efforts to continue working to improve patient care in the hospital setting during the second round of Hospital Engagement Networks.

“Today we are celebrating outstanding work by our hospitals in the ongoing effort to improve patient safety,” said Diane Waldo, OAHHS associate vice president for quality and clinical operations. “GSCHS has made concrete improvements in patient care and outcomes, which means hospitalized patients are safer and less likely to sustain a hospital-acquired condition. That is a result everyone should applaud.”

Since the launch of PfP in 2011, this public-private partnership of the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, under the Department of Health and Human Services, has estimated that 87,000 fewer patients died in hospitals and approximately $20 billion in health care costs were saved as a result of a reduction in hospital-acquired conditions from 2010-2014. Nationally, patient safety is improving, resulting in 2.1 million adverse events and infections avoided in hospitals in that time period. This translates to a 17 percent decline in hospital-acquired conditions during the original HEN project.