Kudos to Glen Cove Hospital

The folks at Glen Cove Hospital are on a roll. Last October, they were listed by the New York State Department of Health as having the lowest central-line associated blood stream infection rate in medical-surgical intensive care units among 113 non-major teaching hospitals in the state. At the time, they had gone over two years without an infection of this sort.

A few week ago, I met Maureen White, RN, from North Shore-LIJ Health System, who told me that the record was now over 2.5 years. This morning, I confirmed that with Jeanine Woltmann, RN, in the Infection Control department.

As of April 30, Glen Cove had gone 1223 ICU patient-days without a central line infection. An outstanding accomplishment by any measure.

How did they do it? Was it some government regulation? Was it incentive payments from the insurance companies or Medicare?

No. They did it because they wanted to do it. Here's the magic solution:

"The superior results at Glen Cove are the result of a collaborative effort between nursing, infection control and physician staff," said Brian Pinard, MD, chief of surgery. "These clinicians have consistently put their motivation and caring into action to reduce the risk of infection while caring for patients."

The culture of patient safety in hospitals has changed dramatically in the last several years, according to Dr. Pinard. He explained that, prior to 2005, there was a common misconception in healthcare that some hospital infections were unavoidable and beyond anyone's control. He said the path to the perfect record began with the hospital's embracing the Institute for Healthcare Improvement's 100,000 Lives Campaign and its emphasis on preventing medical errors and infections.

The hospital's initiatives included communication through daily inter-professional rounds, education, and monitoring of various programs, among them hand hygiene, sterile practices and the use of universal safety protocols. This led to excellent outcomes, improved patient safety, decreased length of stay, a decrease in mortality and cost avoidance, according to Dr. Pinard.

In other words, the people at Glen Cove Hospital do not accept or believe the premise that "these things happen." I again repeat the wise words of Ethel Merman, and also present the original scene from It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World:

Now what kind of an attitude is that, 'these things happen?' They only happen because this whole country is just full of people who, when these things happen, they just say 'these things happen,' and that's why they happen! We gotta have control of what happens to us.



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