Hospitals in Colorado were able to reduce patient harms by 31.1 percent in three years, resulting in $14.8 million in cost savings, thanks to a number of quality improvement initiatives, according to the Colorado Hospital Association.
The CHA's Hospital Engagement Network set out to improve quality in 11 main patient harms. The following is how they did it, broken down by category.
- Preventable readmissions. CHA worked with hospitals to improve patient education, assess patient understanding of the care plan and confirm medication plans prior to discharge. The efforts prevented 1,250 readmissions in three years.
- Early elective deliveries. By partnering with the March of Dimes, CHA created an initiative to put hard-stop policies in place to reduce early-elective deliveries. This resulted in 176 prevented early elective deliveries.
- Deep vein thrombosis. Hospitals were coached to do appropriate risk assessments on patients for DVT as well as prophylaxis protocols. Twenty-five venous thromboembolism events were prevented as a result.
- Catheter-associated urinary tract infections. Colorado hospitals prevented 15 CAUTIs by participating in the ON the CUSP: Stop CAUTI initiative.
- Adverse drug events. Nearly 500 adverse drug events were prevented as CHA coached hospital leaders on partnering with pharmacists to prevent such events.
- Central-line associated bloodstream infections. CHA promoted the use of a checklist for CLABSI prevention and hospitals prevented 14 such infections.
- Surgical site infections. CHA helped educate workers on best practices and OR culture and promoted checklist use to reduce SSIs. The initiative prevented 67 SSIs.
- Patient falls. Hospitals were encouraged to use patient rounding, interventions and risk assessments to prevent falls, and 732 falls were prevented.
- Ventilator-associated pneumonia. CHA hosted a webinar and gave hospitals best practice materials to, resulting in 11 hospitals sustaining a rate of zero VAP cases in their intensive care units.
- Pressure ulcers. CHA hosted webinars on reducing pressure ulcers and gave hospitals information on unit-based skin care programs.
- Obstetrical events. Hospitals received education on pre-eclampsia and OB hemorrhage events, and CHA distributed hemorrhage protocols. This resulted in 71 prevented OB events.
For more information on the program, see CHA's infographic here.