| IDENTIFYING NEEDS The United States spends more money on health care than all advanced industrialized nations, yet performs more poorly than most on several measures of health care quality. According to the Institute of Medicine, nearly 100,000 people nationwide die each year in U.S. hospitals as a result of medical injuries. And the Centers for Disease Control estimates that two million patients contract hospital-acquired infections annually. CRAFTING SOLUTIONS In response, the Institute for Healthcare Improvement developed the 100k Lives Campaign, an effort to work with hospitals across the country to save 100,000 lives over an 18-month period by implementing evidence-based safeguards. These interventions include rapid response at the first sign of patient decline, making certain that patients receive the right medications at every transfer point in care, and adherence to best practices known to prevent heart attacks, infections and ventilator-associated pneumonia. The Colorado Trust is supporting this effort by providing resources to acute care hospitals across the state. Sixty-two of Colorado’s 71 acute care hospitals – nearly 90% – are participating in this campaign, along with 3,000 hospitals nationwide. |
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Memorial Hospital Saving lives in hospital settings requires efficient processes and strong communications among medical staff and hospital personnel, says Richard Eitel, CEO of Memorial Hospital in Colorado Springs. “In our work across all 100k Lives interventions, we realized that our biggest needs are to mitigate communications breakdowns and to help staff know what their resources are. I should be able to ask any member of our nursing staff about what number to call to initiate a rapid response team. "We also want to monitor and respond to patients’ symptoms in a more proactive and timely manner,” said Richard, “to allow the rapid response team to step in prior to an emergency situation developing with a patient. "Within the first couple of months of the campaign, the 477-bed hospital had already shown a remarkable 20% decrease in its number of patient cases that required emergency resuscitation during hospitalization. “Another aspect of our patient safety efforts is investing in equipment and software to provide physicians and staff with control charts and other data that gauge our progress,” Richard said. “You can’t manage what you can’t measure, and providing hard data is a way of engaging people.” |
