Hospitals in pursuit of excellence

Nurses have always been on the front lines at hospitals providing quality, compassionate care for...

March 12-18, 2017, is Patient Safety Awareness Week, led by the National Patient Safety Foundatio...

Quality and safety are “top of the agenda” at urban and rural hospitals across the country. At Ho...

Every aspect of a patient’s experience of care is influenced by valuable and often underused reso...

A health system in rural Minnesota has helped develop an innovative model to prevent prescription...

A “Germ Crusher” challenge at Children’s Hospital Colorado brought together leadership, staff, pa...

“Small changes can make a big difference.” So say health care professionals working to prevent ad...

Using HOUDINI to eliminate CAUTI. It’s all about decreasing the inappropriate use of indwelling c...

Hospitals and faith organizations are collaborating to improve health care outcomes and organize ...

State and regional hospital associations across the United States are recognizing hospitals and h...

One patient safety tool can be used in all care and service areas, improving safety and quality f...

St. Joseph Health, Queen of the Valley Medical Center, a 208-bed hospital in Napa, California, is...

Mission accomplished, but the work continues. At Our Lady of Lourdes Regional Medical Center in L...

Charleston Area Medical Center Health System is a 2015 recipient of the Malcolm Baldrige National...

Leadership, innovation and commitment to quality and safety—all are needed to deliver exceptional...

Each year more than one million patients in the United States are diagnosed with sepsis, a condit...

A unique telemedicine consultation between a rural hospital and skilled rehabilitation/nursing fa...

What does it take to be a winner? Children's Hospital Colorado received the 2015 AHA-McKesson Que...

Teamwork champions on a diverse change team: These were key as The MetroHealth System in Clevelan...

Each year, the Illinois Hospital Association recognizes and celebrates the achievements of Illino...

National attention to the issue of antibiotic stewardship is increasing. Drug-resistant bacteria ...

“Mobility is medicine,” say clinicians and volunteers working together to improve patient care at...

The only acceptable number of avoidable patient harms is zero. At Ponca City (Okla.) Medical Cent...

The AHA/HRET HEN project ended in December 2014, but quality improvement work continues at hospit...

Identifying solutions to reduce hospital-acquired conditions. Working to spread this knowledge to...

Preventing falls has been in the news recently, and with good reason: Among older adults, falls a...

Making incremental changes and collaborating with area hospitals and community organizations have...

Nearly 1,500 U.S. hospitals are working to eliminate patient harm and reduce hospital readmission...

Three Illinois hospitals received recognition for “delivering quality with distinction” by the Il...

It is estimated that 25 percent of falls by hospital patients are preventable. Saint Alphonsus Re...

Small tests of change can give hospitals momentum and show early progress in improvement projects...

Improving care after discharge translates to decreased readmissions. Marshall Medical Center, a 1...

The National Patient Safety Foundation leads Patient Safety Awareness Week in early March to prom...

Never underestimate the power of data. Hannibal (Mo.) Regional Hospital focused on collecting and...

Preventing hospital-acquired infections, reducing surgical complications and reducing readmission...

A “simple” complex plan is reducing readmissions at Wythe County Community Hospital, a 100-bed fa...

Eliminating hospital-acquired infections, preventing patient falls, reducing preventable readmiss...

Teamwork between infection control and environmental services professionals at Hunterdon Medical ...

Zero is an important number at Broward Health North. The 409-bed community hospital in Deerfield ...

It is both a sprint and a marathon.” That's how a team at St. Joseph Mercy Hospital in Ann Arbor,...

Only a small percentage of patients develop a health care-associated infection after surgery, and...

The aviation industry has successfully used checklists to ensure safe air travel for passengers a...

Think of all the instruments, equipment and furniture in a hospital operating room. Any of these ...

Improving discharge can reap multiple benefits for patients and providers, including reducing rea...

More than 64 million surgeries are performed annually in the United States. Preventing surgical s...

Ensuring the highest quality for patient care means continuously reviewing processes and outcomes...

Patients admitted to a hospital for one condition—congestive heart failure, for example—are typic...

Effective care transitions programs can do more than improve patient care: patients learn to mana...

Does your hospital huddle? Staff in the medical-surgical unit at Fairbanks (AK) Memorial Hospital...

Central line-associated bloodstream infections cause serious illness and death. Front-line caregi...

During 2012, despite economic challenges, hospitals and health care systems throughout the United...

43,750: That’s the number of fall injuries the CMS Partnership for Patients campaign estimates wo...

One successful initiative can lead to another. A “nurse transitionist” program at Western Marylan...

Increasing patient adherence to medications? Check. Providing safe, patient-centered care? Check...

Involving everyone from front-line staff to executive committees to home health agencies to patie...

"Commitment to caring" and "quality improvement" and"patient engagement" are more than catchphras...

By "re-engineering"discharge and enhancing communication, The Chester County Hospital, West Chest...

Every four years, the Olympic Games recognize athletes on a quest to be the best in their chosen ...

Patients hospitalized for tobacco-related illnesses may be the most motivated to quit using tobac...

Though more work needs to be done, our nation's hospitals are making advancements in providing qu...

Marking its 60th anniversary last year, Valley Hospital in Ridgewood, NJ, can count many accompli...

Small but mighty describes Neosho Memorial Regional Medical Center, a 25-bed critical access hosp...

Occupying a five-block campus on Chicago's west side and serving an area that stretches about 15 ...

Communication breakdowns continue to be a leading cause of medical errors. Staff at Butler County...

For people with diabetes, getting the proper treatment for foot wounds can prevent lingering prob...

Enriching. That's how AnMed Health views the increasing cultural and linguistic diversity of its ...

Providing quality care for our tiniest patients, many hospitals are eliminating elective early te...

Wrong site surgeries are rare and difficult to study. But most health care organizations recogniz...

Improving quality of care can go hand in hand with eliminating disparities in care. University of...

When Kaiser Permanente in California measured its incidence of pressure ulcers in patients three ...

A technique used in aviation is being applied to health care once again. To detect early malfunct...

Integrating the electronic health record to improve the overall care and health of the communitie...

Careful planning and multidisciplinary teamwork were keys for Bethesda Hospital, a 140-bed long-t...

"App" and "austerity" were among the 2010 "words of the year" named by a dialect society and dict...

Educating staff. Connecting patients to primary care physicians upon discharge. Identifying patie...

Statistics fans, check out these numbers: Staff at Southwestern Vermont Medical Center (SVMC) has...

Poor planning. High costs. These issues helped prompt Saint Joseph-London in London, Ky., to impr...

The mission: to eliminate all preventable harm by January 1, 2012. The team leaders: board of dir...

Transplant recipients are fragile patients, at high risk for infections and fluid and electrolyte...

Front-line nurses led the way in a medication safety initiative at Stanford Hospital & Clinics, S...

Rethinking a registration process kept its meds system in compliance. St. James Hospital and Heal...

Salt and a jar of pickles: That's what one HealthEast (St. Paul, Minn.) transition coach found in...

March 6-12 is designated as National Patient Safety Awareness Week...and we know that America's h...

At the 7th Biennial Joanna Briggs International Colloquium in Chicago, Nancy Donaldson, R.N., dir...

One measure in one area in one month: 1-1-1. That's the call-to-action plan employed by Parrish M...

When Olean (NY) General Hospital decided to improve medication management by using technology, it...

While many health care-acquired infections are transmitted by personal contact due to poor hand h...

Making cleanliness everyone's responsibility was part of an infection control and patient safety ...

At the AHA/Health Forum Leadership Summit in July, David Pryor, M.D., chief medical officer for S...

Alegent Health, a 10-hospital system based in Nebraska and Southwestern Iowa, wanted an electroni...

The medical standard for timely angioplasty was 90 minutes door to balloon.  The average for Lehi...

Senior leaders at Kaiser Permanente Northern California, Oakland, knew the system's community-acq...

Abington (Pa.) Memorial Hospital has used everything from screen saver reminders to notes from th...

When Poudre Valley Health System, based in Fort Collins, Colo., started using bedside medication ...

A wrong-site surgery on a toe was the catalyst for a comprehensive new surgical time-out initiati...

For many hospitals, the road to improved quality often begins with transparency, where unexpected...

Texas Health Resources, a 14-hospital system based in Arlington, wanted to not only reduce ventil...

For executive leaders at Catholic Healthcare Partners, Cincinnati, patient safety is an issue to ...

When Katherine Herrmann, the clinical quality facilitator at Henry Ford Health System, Detroit, w...

When the Infection Prevention and Control Department of Medical Center of McKinney in McKinney, T...