"The Ronan Report" provides insight about the activities at the Western Maryland Health System in Cumberland, Maryland, and about the changes taking place in healthcare today from a CEO's perspective.

Tuesday, September 17, 2013

On the Cusp

The Maryland Hospital Association has had a quality initiative underway for the last few years in which WMHS has participated.  Three performance areas associated with reducing infections were absolutely key and they included CLABSI (Central Line Associated Blood Stream Infections), CAUTI (Catheter Associated Urinary Tract Infections) and VAP (Ventilator Associated Pneumonia).  At WMHS, we have seen a dramatic improvement in all three areas. 

With CLABSI, we increased by one incident between last year and this year; however, we were better than the state average with only seven incidents.  For CAUTI, we went from 28 in FY '11 to 26 in FY '12 and then saw a dramatic reduction in FY '13 to 5 incidents.  We were recognized by the State for our program success.  For VAP, which focuses on two patient units, ICU and Cardiovascular Unit, we ended FY '13 with zero incidents from 6 and 7 incidents the two previous years.  In each instance, we have dramatically improved our care delivery models and the outcomes have been remarkable.  A lot of people contributed to our success.  We had to stress the criticality of working as a team by breaking down those long established silos and it worked.

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