Delivering quality. It's basic to practically any business. For a hospital, it has a special impact. There's more than business success at stake. When a hospital provides quality care, it protects the well-being and lives of its patients.
Lewistown Hospital puts quality performance among its highest priorities, and there's a process that helps fulfill goals of constant quality improvement. It's fairly simple to describe, but its positive effects are far reaching.
The first step is identifying an area for improvement. This can arise from examining bad outcomes and near-miss events, comparing ourselves with state and national benchmarks or listening to suggestions from patients and staff. The Hospital then reaches out to a variety of resources for possible solutions. The Hospital questions other facilities, posts items on professional list serves and finds recent research articles on the topic. An action team is then formed. Members include representatives from any department that is impacted by the issue. The action team develops an improvement plan then tests this plan in one small area and makes adjustments to the plan as needed. The plan is then implemented Hospital-wide and the effectiveness of the plan is monitored over time.
This process is called the Plan-Do-Check-Act. It's a cycle of improvement and it works. It's crucial to providing excellent care.
National quality and satisfaction standards provide a solid basis for comparison. Medicare requires all participating hospitals to report how well they are doing on specific measures that are important to patient safety and quality.
The method is an effective, ongoing process that produces continual improvement. As a result, Lewistown Hospital scores well on quality measures.
For more information, contact the Director of Quality Management at (717) 242-8960.