OAKBROOK TERRACE, Ill. - The Joint Commission on Accreditation of Healthcare Organizations today named the Greater Cincinnati Patient Safety ICU Collaborative a 2005 recipient of the ninth annual Ernest Amory Codman Award to recognize excellence in the use of outcomes measurement by health care organizations to achieve improvements in the quality and safety of health care.
The Greater Cincinnati Patient Safety ICU Collaborative is the recipient of the award in the multiple organization category and is being recognized for using evidence-based practices to improve patient safety. The effort to reduce health-care-acquired infections for patients in the operating room and intensive care units resulted in a 50 percent decrease in central-line infections, and increased adherence to evidence-based practices to 95 percent from 30 percent.
Named for the physician regarded in health care as the "father of outcomes measurement," the Ernest Amory Codman Award showcases the effective use of performance measurement by health care organizations to improve the quality and safety of health care. The Joint Commission also recognizes an individual who has played a significant leadership role in promoting the use of performance measures to improve health care services, or who has made major contributions to the development and testing of performance measures or the science and art of quality improvement. A panel of national experts in quality measurement and improvement selected the six recipients of the 2005 Awards.
"We congratulate the 2005 Codman Award winners for their successful efforts in translating quality measurement and improvement theory into real-world achievements in excellence," says Dennis S. O'Leary, M.D., president, Joint Commission. " Their initiatives provide vivid examples of breakthroughs in using performance measurement to improve health care quality and patient safety."
" As many as 60 percent of the 150,000 catheter-related, blood-stream infections that occur in the U.S. annually are thought to be preventable," says Marta Render, M.D., the patient safety collaborative's primary investigator and director of the Cincinnati Department of Veterans Affairs GAPS Center. "At an estimated cost of between $300 million and $2 billion, reduction in infections would not only reduce patient injury, but also result in considerable savings to our hospitals. This project demonstrates the collaboration among hospitals in Cincinnati to improve outcomes for their patients."
The Greater Cincinnati Patient Safety ICU Collaborative, funded in part by The Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality, enlisted 10 hospitals to participate in a two-year, patient-safety collaborative to reduce health-care-acquired infections for patients receiving care in the highest risk areas of acute care - the operating room and intensive care units. Strategies included reducing central-line infections by standardizing the use of sterile barriers such as gloves, gowns, full-size bed drapes, and applying antiseptic to the insertion site; reducing surgical site infections by using correct antibiotic timing; and training staff in high-risk units in organizational change methodology.
The 10 hospitals participating in the initiative are Bethesda North Hospital, The Christ Hospital, Cincinnati Children's Hospital Medical Center, Cincinnati Department of Veterans Affairs Medical Center, The Fort Hamilton Hospital, Good Samaritan Hospital, The Jewish Hospital, Mercy Hospital Mt. Airy, St. Elizabeth Medical Center and The University Hospital.
The Greater Cincinnati Health Council , a not-for-profit member service organization that undertook the initiative, works cooperatively with hospitals and other health providers to promote high quality, cost-effective patient care.
The Greater Cincinnati Patient Safety ICU Collaborative will formally receive the award on Wednesday, November 9, during the Joint Commission
and Joint Commission Resources' National Conference on Quality and Patient Safety Care in Chicago. Other award winners include behavioral health care - Pikes Peak Mental Health Center, Colorado Springs, Colorado; disease- specific care - Swedish Medical Center, Seattle, Washington; and hospital (two recipients) - Memorial Health Center, Medford, Wisconsin, and Shady Grove Adventist Hospital, Rockville, Maryland. Kenneth W. Kizer, M.D., M.P.H., who is president and chief executive officer of the National Quality Forum, is the individual award winner.
