Patient safety and quality of care are of the utmost importance in healthcare facilities nationwide. To improve clinical outcomes, healthcare employers must also focus on the safety and well-being of their staff. When healthcare employees are supported mentally, physically and emotionally, they are more satisfied in their roles and better able to focus on patient care throughout the day.
Infectious diseases easily pass directly or indirectly from one person to another, creating significant threats in healthcare settings. The World Health Organization (WHO) found three common types of infectious diseases ranked in the top 10 causes of death globally: lower respiratory infections, HIV/AIDS
and diarrheal diseases. Other serious infectious diseases that pose a great risk to patient safety include influenza, small pox, hepatitis and tuberculosis.
Pain affects more Americans than diabetes and cancer combined, afflicting more than 100 million Americans.
Purposeful rounding seeks to improve the patient experience and outcomes through the use of hourly rounding routines. A study from Stanford Health Care found significant benefits to patient safety after adopting purposeful rounding practices, including:
Healthcare-associated infections (HAI) are the most frequent adverse event in healthcare delivery worldwide. According to the CDC, HAIs affect 5 to 10 percent of hospitalized patients in the U.S. annually, totaling approximately 1.7 million infections, 99,000 deaths and an estimated $20 billion in healthcare costs each year.ix Research suggests when healthcare facilities, care teams and individual providers are aware of infection problems and take specific steps to prevent them, the rates of certain HAIs can decrease by more than 70 percent.
Accidental falls are among the most common incidents reported at hospitals and cause complications in approximately 2 percent of hospital stays.
Alarm fatigue is an important issue to address, as the number of alarms going off over the course of an average nurse’s shift can be overwhelming. According to the Joint Commission, 85 to 99 percent of alarm signals do not require clinical intervention. Over time, staff are in danger of subconsciously tuning out some of their alarms as they try to focus on the task at hand. To combat alarm fatigue, hospitals must implement a strategy to reduce the unnecessary noise levels and help workers differentiate between the signals they experience each day.
Initial assessments of any patient can be uncertain, and accuracy of information from the start can help prevent errors throughout the cycle of care. According to a study from John Hopkins, medical errors are now the third leading cause of death in the U.S., accounting for 10 percent of all deaths, or more than 250,000 per year.
Value-based care is centered on boosting patient safety and driving overall efficiency while simultaneously pushing for operational advancement without sacrificing quality of care. One major focus of the transition to value-based care is addressing and preventing adverse events that can impact patient safety, clinical outcomes, reimbursements and, thus, the bottom line.
With the transition to a value-based reimbursement model, a dramatic paradigm shift in healthcare economics has occurred – driving quality and safety in hospitals while determining payment based on demonstrated quality outcomes. Investing in the right technology can improve your competitive potential in the value-based reimbursement model by deploying evidence-based practice strategies and measuring results.