Case Studies
The ºÚÁÏÕýÄÜÁ¿ Association produces case studies on its member organizations across a wide range of health-care topics.
Central line-associated blood stream infections cause serious patient harm, leading to thousands of deaths each year. Patient safety is the medical center's highest priority in delivering excellent patient family centered care. This project focused on the critical-care units delivery of…
Reduction in the use of fluoroquinolones is an important intervention for antimicrobial stewardship programs to minimize untoward effects of these agents (increased risk of neuropathies, dysglycemia among diabetics, QTc prolongation, acute kidney injury - risk if on concomitant ACE-Is or ARBs),…
The hospital started working on Project Re-engineered Discharge (Project RED) in 2011. A patient navigator was hired to focus on Medicare patients with congestive heart failure. In 2013, the roles were realigned and the navigator, utilization manager and social worker started reporting directly to…
The pediatric team at this hospital recognized the need to improve processes surrounding care of the pediatric patient with asthma. A multidisciplinary group formed to develop strategies to increase compliance of the pediatric asthma core measures. At the same time, the team worked to revamp…
The medical center consistently missed internal quality targets, with a mean HAPU rate for 2007-2013 of 5.39 percent, median 5.33 percent. Although HAPU prevention measures had been put in place previously with some improvement, results were not significant or sustained. An analysis of current…
Parental satisfaction with pediatric emergency department visits has been argued to be best predicted 'by how well physicians and nurses work together, followed by wait time and pain management.' The primary aim of this initiative was to assess changes in parental satisfaction with communication…
The goal was to reduce the delay in patient care by reducing patient wait times, both from requested to scheduled time and at time of procedure. Process defects were identified as procedures in medical imaging that start greater than seven minutes after a scheduled start time, and a scheduled wait…
Maternal cardiac arrest is rare but often fatal. Obstetricians and perinatal nurses are often first responders with limited experience in managing primary cardiac arrest and ACLS pregnancy modifications. Multidisciplinary simulations improve performance in catastrophe management but few studies…
Antimicrobial Stewardship Programs direct judicious antimicrobial use to optimize patient outcomes and improve patient safety. New pharmacokinetic services were implemented as part of the medical center's ASP's patient safety initiatives to optimize antimicrobial dosing and also inline…
Antibiotic stewardship was implemented in 2011 and focuses on five 'D's': Drug, De-escalation of therapy, Discontinuation of therapy, Dose and Diagnosis. The pharmacy department automatically adjusts therapy based on patient's renal function and enforces restrictions on certain antibiotics. All of…