Improving Compliance with Preoperative Nasal Povidone-Iodine to Prevent Surgical Site Infection in Vascular and Neurosurgery Services in a Community Teaching Hospital.

Surgical site infections (SSI) remain a cause of morbidity, prolonged hospitalization, surgical readmission, and death. Nasal colonization with methicillin-resistant Staphylococcal aureus is a frequent cause of device-related SSI and nasal mupirocin has been used for prevention. More recently, povidone-iodine nasal swabs have become an alternative. It is cheaper, ensures compliance and there are no concerns regarding antimicrobial resistance. However, its adoption was suboptimal in a community hospital system in southwestern Ohio, especially in neurosurgery and vascular surgery. Quality improvement techniques, including solicitation of stakeholder input, surgeons and perioperative nurses' education, and the use of reminders to order and administer the povidone-iodine nasal swabs improved physician ordering and nurse administration compliance, leading to fewer infections. The interventions continued after the project was completed, sustaining decreases in neurosurgery and vascular surgery, and fewer SSI through the first years of the pandemic. Despite the complexity of these surgeries, simple interventions were effective in addressing the problem.

Reducing Diabetic Ketoacidosis Readmissions with a Hospital-School-Based Improvement Partnership.

Diabetic ketoacidosis (DKA) is the leading cause of morbidity and mortality in pediatric type 1 diabetes mellitus (T1D). Baseline data showed 139 of 182 DKA readmissions (76.4%) were due to missed basal insulin dosing. The team used quality improvement tools to implement a process change around basal insulin. The project utilized insulin degludec and school-based nurses when missed basal insulin was noted as a main driver for readmission. The DKA readmission rate averaged 5.25 per month from January 2017 to April 2019. The rate decreased to 3.64 per month during the intervention from May 2019 to March 2020, a 31% reduction over 11 months. This standardized approach for patients with T1D readmitted with DKA, using a school-based intervention and insulin degludec, reduced the number of DKA readmissions. This method is safe and effective for lowering DKA readmissions due to missed basal insulin in areas with reliable school nursing.

Toward Successful and Sustainable Statewide Screening for Social Determinants of Health: Testing the Interest of Hospitals.

The impact of social and behavioral factors on health outcomes are well defined in the field of public health. Additionally, characteristics such as race, ethnicity, and language have been proven to affect an individual's capacity to address health care needs. While these nonclinical components affect care, variations in screening methodology between organizations make it difficult to analyze data broadly. Standardized approaches can mitigate the impact of these factors but may be difficult to incorporate into an established workflow. The Connecticut Hospital Association identified social determinants of health (SDOH) as a factor affecting patient outcomes during a statewide collaborative on asthma. The goal of this quality improvement project was to explore change in workflow as a barrier to screening for SDOH in hospitals. Four hospitals participated in the pilot using a standardized screening tool to assess 662 patients; 62% (n = 410) were White, 11% (n = 76) were Black, 5% (n = 31) were classified as other, and 22% (n = 145) were in unknown race categories. Of those reporting needs, 438 (66%) had food-, housing-, or transportation-related needs. Qualitative interviews with staff from pilot hospitals were conducted. There were 3 main themes: the screening tool was easy to use; patients could be reluctant to reveal SDOH information; and lack of a standardized referral process made patient screening difficult to sustain or justify. The volume and magnitude of SDOH needs identified, along with the sense of helplessness expressed in qualitative interviews, reinforced the decision to implement a technology platform for screening, closed-loop referral, and outcome measurement.

The unintended consequences of being friendly: a case study.

Baby-friendly certification recognizes hospitals that promote early physical bonding between mother and infant, immediately after birth. Most births can accomplish physical bonding without increased risk to mother or infant. When mother or infant have complications and each have intravenous (i.v.) lines and are receiving medications, the physical bonding post-birth may also inadvertently put the patients at risk. A baby-friendly community hospital in New England found that early bonding put an infant at higher risk for medication error when the two i.v. lines were not properly identified and the infant received a medication intended for the mother. The growing body of literature on i.v. medication safety does not address this particular type of error, and this was an error that technology would not have prevented. The "5 rights" of medication safety are not as effective as physical separation of the two individuals during medication administration. A brief separation does not diminish bonding, and the practice has prevented subsequent errors.

NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital: translating innovation into practice.

BACKGROUND: NewYork-Presbyterian (NYP) Hospital, a 2,242-bed not-for-profit academic medical center, was formed by a merger of The New York Hospital and The Presbyterian Hospital in the City of New York. It is also the flagship for the NewYork-Presbyterian Healthcare System, with 37 acute care facilities and 18 others. OVERALL APPROACH TO QUALITY AND SAFETY: The hospital embeds safety in the culture through strategic initiatives and enhances service and efficiency using Six Sigma and other techniques to drive adoption of improvements. Goals are selected in alignment with the annual strategic initiatives, which are chosen on the basis of satisfaction surveys, patient and family complaints, community advisory groups, and performance measures, among other sources. USE OF INFORMATION TO SET AND EVALUATE QUALITY GOALS AND PRIORITIZE INITIATIVES: A new business intelligence system enables online, dynamic analysis of performance results, replacing static paper reports. Advanced features in the clinical information systems include computerized physician order entry; interactive clinical alerts for decision support; a real-time infection control tracking system; and a clinical data warehouse supporting data mining and analysis for quality improvement, decision making, and education. APPROACH TO ADDRESSING THE SIX IOM QUALITY AIMS: To achieve clinical, service, and operational excellence, NYP focuses on all Institute of Medicine quality aims.

Model for a merger: New York-Presbyterian's use of service lines to bring two academic medical centers together.

NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital is the result of the 1998 merger of two large New York City academic medical centers, the former New York and Presbyterian Hospitals, and is affiliated with two independent medical schools, the Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons and the Joan and Sanford J. Weill Medical College of Cornell University. At the time of the merger, the hospital faced a number of significant challenges, chief among them the clinical integration of the two medical centers. Size, separate medical schools, geography, and different histories and cultures all presented barriers to collaboration. To bring about the needed clinical alignment, the hospital turned to service lines as a way to realize the benefits of clinical integration without forcing the consolidation of departments. In this article, members of the hospital's senior management review the thinking behind the hospital's use of the service lines, their development and operation, and the significant, positive effects they have had on volume, clinical quality, clinical efficiency, best practices, and revenue management. They discuss how the service lines were used to bring together the two clinical cultures, the impact they have had on the way the hospital is operated and managed, and why service lines have worked at NewYork-Presbyterian in contrast to other hospitals that tried and abandoned them. Service lines play an increasingly central role in the hospital's clinical and business strategies, and are being extended into the NewYork-Presbyterian health care system.

Impact of a computerized alert during physician order entry on medication dosing in patients with renal impairment.

Computerized assistance to clinicians during physician order entry can provide protection against medical errors. However, computer systems that provide too much assistance may adversely affect training of medical students and residents. Trainees may rely on the computer to automatically perform complex calculations and create appropriate orders and are thereby deprived of an important educational exercise. An alternative strategy is to provide a critique at the completion of an order, requiring the trainee to enter the entire order but displaying an alert if an error is made. While this approach preserves the educational components of order-writing, the potential for errors exists if the computerized critique does not induce clinicians to correct the order. The goal of this study was to determine (a) the frequency with which errors are made by trainees in an environment in which renal dosing adjustment calculation for antimicrobials are done by the system after the user has entered an order, and (b) the frequency with which prompts to clinicians regarding these errors leads to correction of those orders.