Hospitals celebrate quality care
While no one actually tried tossing multiple 15,000-pound mammals from hand to hand, the afternoon keynote address delivered by Jones Loflin, co-author of the book Juggling Elephants, offered insight into how employees can juggle the three rings of their lives – self, relationships and work – to get the best results in each area.
Stress, and the emotional and physical fatigue that accompany it, are common in clinical hospital workers. They work long hours in fast-paced environments and tend to be caring, giving people who continually put others before themselves. The compassion fatigue many experience has contributed to clinical staff shortages in hospitals across the country.
While Loflin’s presentation got rave reviews from employees, along with the morning keynote address on the impact of leadership on organizational performance delivered by Jean Chenoweth of Thomson Reuters, the purpose of the event was to collaborate with other health care professionals to share best practices related to patient safety and quality.
“The opening presentation was geared toward how we’re doing and what we need to continue to focus on, and the good work that we’re doing that showed itself in our data,” said event organizer Colleen Strom, Community’s vice president for quality, regulatory and risk management.
Strom said the idea for the Best Practice Summit came about when someone wrote her a note saying, “I’m tired of hearing what we do wrong. Why don’t we ever talk about the things we do right?”
While Chenoweth outlined the key best practices of America's 100 best hospials, she pointed out where Community is doing well. Community Regional Medical Center ranks in the top 2% of hospitals nationwide in its improvement on patient safety measures, and better than the national benchmark in patient complications.
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| The burn center at Community Regional submitted this entry for the Best Practice Summit, an endo-tracheal security device for patients with facial burns. |
Several highly recognized speakers were on hand after Chenowith's morning presentation to guide employees – including managers, directors and leadership – through eight different breakout sessions before completing the day with an awards ceremony for the best health care practices of the year.
Finalists came from Community Regional Medical Center, Clovis Community Medical Center, Fresno Heart & Surgical Center and Community Behavioral Health Center.
“It’s great to see first of all the breadth of all the people that applied from each of the hospitals,” said Dr. Tom Utecht, Community’s chief quality officer. “Looking at all of the participants, and then seeing the joy, the elation on people’s faces when they actually realize people are recognizing them for a great job.”
Community Regional’s intensive care team took the clinical award for its reduction in ventilator-associated pneumonia that also was recognized by VHA, a nationwide network of community-owned health care systems and their physicians.
In the non-clinical category, Community Regional’s clerical radiology team was honored for its implementation of AHI QA, a Web-based system designed to help correct errors in registration records.
Clovis Community’s bariatric department, which was named best in the state and top 5% in the nation by HealthGrades, earned the team collaboration trophy. The most innovative award went to Community Regional’s trauma unit for its process improvement.
Strom said plans are in the works to make the Best Practice Summit an annual event as Community continues to aim for 100% patient, physician and employee satisfaction.
“We’re all motivated to improve,” Strom said. “Most of the energy this afternoon had to do with all of the hard work and great outcomes that we’ve had over the last year and really highlighting and celebrating those achievements.”
This story was reported by Eddie Hughes. He can be reached at eddieh@communitymedical.org.