Healthcare Chronicles: Changing for the Better
July 22, 2009
Healthcare Chronicles
by Craig Becker
This report originally appeared in the August 2009 issue of DOTmed Business News
I have been a part of the medical community for thirty years and I feel I can say with some certainty that the only thing that remains constant is change. Fortunately, change can be good and recent developments in my area are a case-in-point. When I started my career, there were issues that health care providers had when dealing with central line and surgical infections among patients. While the rate of infection wasn't outrageous, I think back in the day we all felt, that there were problems, but many just accepted it as a hazard of health care.
Eventually, people realized that things didn't need to be that way - there was room for improvement and training and technology made that improvement possible. A growing realization that large financial savings could be realized probably helped lend even more backing to the cause.
Today, there are stories about infections acquired in hospitals and the worry of a potential "superbug," developing that won't react to any treatments and will run rampant. I don't feel things are as bad as the media are portraying them, but I also don't think we're as good as we think we are either. The positive from the publicity - whether it's overblown or not, is that we've succeeded in getting some attention for the problems and that has helped tremendously. Now that we have the attention and the support, it's important to use it to the best of our abilities to make infection rates decrease dramatically.
About three years ago the Tennessee Hospital Association (THA) started working on ways to cut down on infection rates. In the last 18 months, things have really taken off. These teams work in our center for patient safety. Our team has three people dedicated to developing our practices for infection control. One individual coordinates the activities, one is a former CNO who works with the various teams in the field and the third is the communication person. This team also benefits from our fairly robust data collection. Since its inception there has been a marked improvement in just a short time. Enough so, that we recently received a $3.5 million dollar grant from Blue Cross, Blue Shield, to implement patient safety protocol.
With the health and well-being of our patients being our number one priority, we have teamed with some of the best hospitals in the country to put into place a system that works. We modeled our system after Michigan (Keystone) and Johns Hopkins Hospitals. Both organizations have been incredibly helpful, in particular, Peter Pronovost of Johns Hopkins and Chris Goeschel Keystone. These hospitals have been very successful in preventing central line and surgical infections among their patients and they have been very open with sharing their knowledge helping not only our hospitals, but of course, the patients for whom we provide care.
Next step would be to collect data that shows unusual events and have the info analyzed and taken out into the field. Kind of like the airline industry does - whenever there's a case of a near miss they tabulate and correct problems. We do comparative data - we also find hospitals with zero infection rates and hold them up as best practices and try to develop relationships to share that information and build a better health care system, not just for our own hospitals, but for patients nationwide.
Craig Becker has been president and chief executive officer of the Tennessee Hospital Association and its subsidiaries, THA Solutions Group, Inc., and the Tennessee Hospital and Education Research Foundation, since August 1993. Prior to joining THA, Becker was president of the Maine Hospital Association as well as the vice president of government relations at the New Jersey Hospital Association. Becker has served as chief development officer at Our Lady of Lourdes Medical Center, a 384-bed teaching hospital and a Foster McGaw Award winner located in Camden, NJ.
This report originally appeared in the August 2009 issue of DOTmed Business News
I have been a part of the medical community for thirty years and I feel I can say with some certainty that the only thing that remains constant is change. Fortunately, change can be good and recent developments in my area are a case-in-point. When I started my career, there were issues that health care providers had when dealing with central line and surgical infections among patients. While the rate of infection wasn't outrageous, I think back in the day we all felt, that there were problems, but many just accepted it as a hazard of health care.
Eventually, people realized that things didn't need to be that way - there was room for improvement and training and technology made that improvement possible. A growing realization that large financial savings could be realized probably helped lend even more backing to the cause.
Today, there are stories about infections acquired in hospitals and the worry of a potential "superbug," developing that won't react to any treatments and will run rampant. I don't feel things are as bad as the media are portraying them, but I also don't think we're as good as we think we are either. The positive from the publicity - whether it's overblown or not, is that we've succeeded in getting some attention for the problems and that has helped tremendously. Now that we have the attention and the support, it's important to use it to the best of our abilities to make infection rates decrease dramatically.
About three years ago the Tennessee Hospital Association (THA) started working on ways to cut down on infection rates. In the last 18 months, things have really taken off. These teams work in our center for patient safety. Our team has three people dedicated to developing our practices for infection control. One individual coordinates the activities, one is a former CNO who works with the various teams in the field and the third is the communication person. This team also benefits from our fairly robust data collection. Since its inception there has been a marked improvement in just a short time. Enough so, that we recently received a $3.5 million dollar grant from Blue Cross, Blue Shield, to implement patient safety protocol.
With the health and well-being of our patients being our number one priority, we have teamed with some of the best hospitals in the country to put into place a system that works. We modeled our system after Michigan (Keystone) and Johns Hopkins Hospitals. Both organizations have been incredibly helpful, in particular, Peter Pronovost of Johns Hopkins and Chris Goeschel Keystone. These hospitals have been very successful in preventing central line and surgical infections among their patients and they have been very open with sharing their knowledge helping not only our hospitals, but of course, the patients for whom we provide care.
Next step would be to collect data that shows unusual events and have the info analyzed and taken out into the field. Kind of like the airline industry does - whenever there's a case of a near miss they tabulate and correct problems. We do comparative data - we also find hospitals with zero infection rates and hold them up as best practices and try to develop relationships to share that information and build a better health care system, not just for our own hospitals, but for patients nationwide.
Craig Becker has been president and chief executive officer of the Tennessee Hospital Association and its subsidiaries, THA Solutions Group, Inc., and the Tennessee Hospital and Education Research Foundation, since August 1993. Prior to joining THA, Becker was president of the Maine Hospital Association as well as the vice president of government relations at the New Jersey Hospital Association. Becker has served as chief development officer at Our Lady of Lourdes Medical Center, a 384-bed teaching hospital and a Foster McGaw Award winner located in Camden, NJ.
