Community Hospital honored for improvements

McCook, Nebraska--Community Hospital has been chosen as a "spotlight hospital" by the Nebraska Hospital Association as a participant in the National Hospital Engagement Network, or HEN. The Nebraska report featuring Community Hospital was submitted to the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services.

"Congratulations to everyone at Community Hospital for providing evidence-based care and improving outcomes for our patients," said Joleen Bradley, RN, Community Hospital Performance Improvement Director. "We've been going through a tremendous amount of change and working on a lot of quality initiatives. The results we have seen would not be possible without everyone working together as a team."

The report reads in part:

"Nebraska Hospital Association Snapshot of State Progress to Date and Forward Look to 2013

"Nebraska hospitals are putting the pieces together to deliver high quality, patient centered care by participating in the national Hospital Eng agement Network Showcase Hospital Demonstrating Significant Improvement Progress / Results:

"Community Hospital is a 25-bed, critical access hospital located in McCook, Nebraska, population, 7,698, which serves approximately 30,000 people in southwest Nebraska and the surrounding area.

"They are currently working on seven of the eight hospital-acquired conditions applicable to their facility, and are demonstrating excellent progress. They have instituted specific patient education for certain populations such as congestive heart failure, COPD, stroke and pneumonia, which has contributed to a reduction in their heart failure readmission rate from 6.1 percent to 0 percent during the past seven months.

"They improved situational awareness in surgery by adopting a checklist and improved timing of antibiotics to 100 percent for eight months. No surgical site infections have been identified for hospital inpatients for 20 months. With their VTE protocol (blood clot prevention), they have achieved 100 percent compliance with appropriate VTE prophylaxis with the surgery population and no potentially preventable VTEs have occurred in 20 months.

"To reduce the incidence of early elective deliveries, they instituted a scheduling policy with verification of gestational age. Their rate of early elective deliveries decreased from 40 percent to 5.3 percent during the past nine months. This will decrease the incidence of babies having to be admitted to the NICU due to prematurity.

"They have just begun to work on an "I stop for lights" campaign to reduce their rate of falls. Community Hospital is an excellent example of one of Nebraska's hospitals that are "putting the pieces together" and delivering high quality, patient centered care."