Local Success Stories
Qualis Health is pleased to collaborate with so many hard-working healthcare organizations across Idaho and Washington.
While recognizing that quality improvement is a never-ending journey, it's important to celebrate the successes along the way. A sampling of the improvements that our project participants have achieved is provided below. Jump down the page to see success stories related to:
- Clinical quality measures
- Avoiding rehospitalizations
- Electronic health record systems
- Management techniques
- Communication methods
You can also learn more about the notable accomplishments of Idaho and Washington healthcare organizations by reading about the winners of our annual Award of Excellence in Healthcare Quality.
Clinical Quality Measures
Infection Control
Reinforcement—from collaborative participants and happy residents—ensured the success of this nursing home's infection control project
Through her participation in a regional “mini collaborative” focused on infection control, the administrator at Dungeness Courte Alzheimer’s Community renewed her motivation to make handwashing a priority. The structure and educational sessions of the collaborative helped her turn that motivation into a successfully implemented project—even with a few bumps in the road.
Read the story, published September 2011.
Preventing Pressure Ulcers
Harborview Medical Center:
A case study in the prevention of hospital acquired pressure ulcers
Harborview Medical Center is being recognized for its innovative efforts to prevent and intervene to reduce hospital acquired pressure ulcers (HAPU). HAPU occur in 3% to 12% of hospitalized patients. Patient suffering and excess of care associated with HAPU have fueled national and local initiatives to address prevention.
Read the full article, excerpted from the Summer 2009 Patient Safety Advance.
NAC input, simplified processes key to pressure ulcer prevention
Regency at Puyallup, WA Rehabilitation Center significantly reduced their high-risk pressure ulcer rates: from an average of 18.1 in 2003-2005 down to 5.2 for the second quarter of 2006. How did they achieve such a substantial change? The Regency team approached this challenge from several angles, trying one method at a time and working out the kinks before instituting house-wide changes.
Read the full article, excerpted from the Winter 2007 Nursing Home Advance.
Preventing Venous Thromboembolisms (VTEs)
A small Idaho hospital uses a national collaborative to engage staff in VTE prevention
Looking back, it’s clear that joining the QIO Learning Network’s national collaborative on preventing hospital-acquired venous thromboembolisms (VTE) was a turning point for Madison Memorial Hospital, a 69-bed facility in Rexburg, Idaho.
Read the story, published April 2011.
Reducing Restraint Use
Reducing restraints, alarms, and falls: one success leads to another
Back in 2007, Caldwell Care Center in Caldwell, Idaho, had restraint rates of 14.3% for quarters one and two, and 9.5% for quarters three and four. In 2008, going restraint free seemed like a challenging if not impossible task—but they made it.
Read the full article, excerpted from the Spring 2011 Patient Safety Advance.
Impacting Vaccination Rates
Doing it right: Samaritan Healthcare dramatically improves its PPV rate
How did a 50-bed, rural hospital in Moses Lake, WA go from having a 2.9% pneumococcal polysaccharide vaccine (PPV) rate in Q4 of 2004 to a 79% rate in Q4 2006? “By firmly believing that the staff wants to do it the right way,” says Gwen Cox, Director, Quality Improvement at Samaritan Healthcare.
Read the full article, excerpted from the Winter 2007 Hospital Advance.
Avoiding Rehospitalizations
Bundled discharge interventions help reduce 30-day readmission rates
At a time when one out of five hospitalized Medicare patients is readmitted within 30 days, a set of new discharge processes piloted at PeaceHealth St. Joseph Medical Center in Bellingham, WA may help break the readmission cycle.
Read the story, published January 2011.
Care transitions coaching saves Medicare & Medicaid dollars
Qualis Health recently coached a dual-eligible Medicare/Medicaid beneficiary with multiple chronic illnesses how to better manage her own care. For seven months, she remained in her own home and successfully managed to avoid a return trip to the hospital—quite an improvement compared to the previous 13 months, when she was hospitalized nine times.
Read the story, published January 2010.
Patient empowered by transitions coaching
For Elizabeth Parker, a 77-year-old grandmother with several chronic health conditions and a complex mix of medications, being admitted to the hospital has become an all-too-frequent activity. And she’s not alone. According to a 2004 study, nearly one in five people with Medicare coverage who were hospitalized that year were readmitted within 30 days of being discharged.
Read the story, published July 2009.
Yakima, WA agency covers all the bases in its efforts to reduce rehospitalizations
Concerned over their rehospitalization rate—which had been climbing for several years—a team at Yakima’s Memorial Home Care Services decided enough was enough. They needed to figure out a way to reverse this trend.
Read the full article, excerpted from the Spring 2007 Home Health Advance.
Electronic Health Record Systems
Using EHRs to Improve Care
Divide and conquer:
How Sea Mar Community Health Centers successfully separated mammography from other office workflows and dramatically increased screening rates
By reorganizing their workflow, clarifying team member roles, and making better use of their electronic health record (EHR) system, the Sea Mar Community Health Centers (20 clinics located along Washington's I-5 corridor) have achieved remarkable successes in ensuring that their patients get screening mammograms.
Read the story, published May 2011
Boise clinics are continuing to discover the power of their EHR reports
The four Boise-area practices that comprise St. Luke's Internal Medicine (SLIM) have made strides in improving their EHR-based documentation, and successful provision, of immunizations and cancer screenings. The first step that got this work off the ground? Pulling the appropriate data from the EHR.
Read the story, published March 2011.
Lean workflow helps streamline patient visits, improve focus on quality measures
"It was an eye-opening experience,” Bill Neighbor, MD, said about the Lean workflow training that Qualis Health provided to the staff at University of Washington Medical Center – Roosevelt. “It generated a lot of enthusiasm to make patient visits more efficient—and a better experience for both patients and ourselves.” Qualis Health guided the team to make better use of their existing electronic health record (EHR) system.
Read the story, published March 2010.
Idaho clinics working to ensure that preventive services truly are routine
It’s no secret that preventive services are important but easily overlooked. A team at Terry Reilly Health Services (TRHS), a group of community health clinics located in southwestern Idaho, has begun tackling this problem by figuring out ways to make preventive services happen routinely—even when the patient or provider hasn’t thought to address the issue during a particular visit.
Read the story, published February 2010.
Personalized assistance helps clinics on the forefront of HIT use
Read the story, published July 2009.
Implementing EHRs and E-Prescribing Systems
Strong commitment and solid prep work put PHMG on the fast track to EHRs
The management team at Primary Health Medical Group (PHMG), a multi-specialty medical group with 13 clinics in Idaho’s Treasure Valley, decided to make the transition to electronic health records (EHRs) a priority for 2007. Before the year was out, they had identified a core team, chosen a vendor, trained staff, and successfully launched the EHR system in all 13 clinics.
Read the full article, excerpted from the Winter 2007 Physician Office Advance.
Management Techniques
Leadership Methods of Supporting Staff
"Customer second—staff first" at Pacific Care and Rehabilitation Center
This corporation's leadership philosophy may seem counter-intuitive to patient-centered care. Yet, the AHRQ Nursing Home Patient Safety Culture Survey scores for this 100-bed facility are among the highest in the nation. How do they do it?
Read the full article, excerpted from the Summer 2010 Patient Safety Advance.
Lean workflow training points the way to reducing staff stress and providing more timely care
Qualis Health led a cross-functional team from the University of Washington (UW) Neighborhood Clinics through a three-day course on Lean methodology and helped the team understand, indentify, and prevent “waste” of all kinds—especially wasted time in the form of phone tag between medical assistants, physicians, and patients.
Read the story, published July 2009.
Executive Rounding
Commitment to administrative rounding
Portneuf Medical Center, a 250-bed acute care facility in eastern Idaho, implemented a comprehensive rounding program that includes directors and administrative leaders. The technique has improved care quality and employee satisfaction.
Read the full article, excerpted from the Summer 2010 Patient Safety Advance.
Creating a culture where everyone can prevent defects
In response to a fatal adverse event in 2004, Virginia Mason Medical Center immediately embarked upon a leadership-led initiative to eliminate avoidable death and injury. A key component of this work is weekly walk-rounds by the executive team.
Read the full article, excerpted from the Summer 2010 Patient Safety Advance.
Decreasing Response Time
Equipment handling dramatically streamlined by ‘Operation Clean Sweep’
Not long ago, a resident at Martha & Mary Health Services in Poulsbo, WA might have had to wait 25 minutes while staff hunted for an appropriate wheelchair. Now, the average wait time is just five minutes—thanks to ‘Operation Clean Sweep.’
Read the full article, excerpted from the Summer 2007 Nursing Home Advance.
Identifying and Sustaining Change
Using the AHRQ survey to evaluate change
Valley Medical Center of Renton, WA implemented their online event reporting system just after completing the AHRQ Survey of Patient Safety Culture (SOPSC)—providing a natural opportunity to evaluate the impact of this intervention and other parallel efforts by using subsequent SOPSCs to compare pre- and post-intervention scores. Seeing a meausurable shift and reporting back to staff can be powerful.
Read the full article, excerpted from the Autumn 2010 Patient Safety Advance.
Training Staff Effectively
Plan ahead to make in-services more powerful
When your nursing home plans its next in-service, follow the lead of Regency at Puyallup, WA Rehabilitation Center—which took the time to answer the following questions—to fine-tune your efforts and maximize the results.
Read the full article, excerpted from the Winter 2007 Nursing Home Advance.
Communication Methods
Improving physician-nurse communication and teamwork using SBAR
Leadership at Puget Sound Healthcare, a nursing home in Olympia, WA, identified physician-nurse communication and teamwork as an important focus for their quality improvement efforts. Qualis Health facilitated a leadership session on how structured communication and flattened hierarchy can improve communication effectiveness.
Read the full article, excerpted from the Winter 2011 Patient Safety Advance.
"Teach-back" communication technique is quickly embraced by hospital staff and patients
As part of the Stepping Stones Project in Whatcom County, WA, Qualis Health taught the Teach-back communications technique to more than 70 PeaceHealth St. Joseph Medical Center staff members. One nurse said about the method: "The questions are life-changing. Thanks for this program. Now I get it."
Read the story, published April 2010.