Baptist Medical Center Earns Codman Award
The Joint Commission on Accreditation of Healthcare Organizations (JCAHO) today named Baptist Medical Center, Jacksonville, Florida, a 2003 winner of the seventh annual Ernest A. Codman Award to recognize excellence in the use of outcomes measurement by health care organizations to achieve improvements in the quality and safety of health care.
Baptist Medical Center is the recipient of the award in the hospital category for an initiative that reduced the infection rates of post-operative, coronary artery bypass graft (CABG) surgery patients by analyzing surgical practices and making comparisons with national best practices. The resulting improvements in care led to a decrease in surgical wound infections and no cases of chest-cavity infections.
Named for the physician regarded in health care as the "father of outcomes measurement," the Ernest A. Codman Award showcases the effective use of performance measurement by health care organizations to improve the quality and safety of health care. A panel of national experts in quality measurement and improvement selected the four recipients of the 2003 Awards.
"Improvements that measurably advance health care require innovative thinking, teamwork, and commitment," says Dennis S. O'Leary, M.D., president, JCAHO. "The winners of the 2003 Codman Awards demonstrate all of those characteristics."
"Baptist Health strives for excellence in our clinical service areas and we are committed to continuous improvement," says A. Hugh Greene, president and chief executive officer, Baptist Health. "We are grateful to our dedicated heart bypass surgery team for their commitment to outcome measures and application of best practices and are most appreciative of this recognition of their results."
Surgical site wound infections can be a complication of CABG surgery. In 2001, Baptist Medical Center experienced a CABG surgical wound infection rate that was above the anticipated rate. Additionally, chest-cavity infection was identified as a problem and pre-operative antibiotic-to-incision time was greater than CDC recommendations. The hospital's resulting improvement plan included clipping rather than shaving hair at the surgical site; infusing insulin for 72 hours post-operatively to maintain blood sugars; standardizing wound care; using appropriate antibiotics in the nose; and establishing an antibiotic-to-incision time between 30 to 60 minutes.
In addition to reducing infection rates, Baptist Medical Center credits the initiative for leading to other improvement activities for the hospital's cardiovascular surgery patients; increased teamwork and communication between operating room staff in its efforts to revise processes to integrate the administration of antibiotics; and support the hospital's efforts to expand community access to cardiovascular services.
Health care associated infections constitute a significant safety risk for individuals receiving care in a variety of settings. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) estimates that two million individuals acquire an infection each year while being treated in hospitals for other illnesses or injuries, and that 90,000 people die as a result.
Baptist Medical Center is a full-service tertiary hospital that provides a wide range of services in cardiology, oncology, women's health, orthopaedics and pediatrics. Its other major services include emergency care, critical care, bloodless medicine, pulmonary, pastoral care, radiology, minimally invasive procedures, rehabilitation and psychiatry/psychology. Baptist Medical Center is part of Baptist Health, a faith-based, mission-driven health system in Florida.
Baptist Medical Center will formally receive the award on Wednesday, December 3, during JCAHO and Joint Commission Resources' National Conference on Quality and Safety in Health Care in Chicago. Other award winners include: behavioral health care - Millcreek Behavioral Health Services, Magee, Mississippi; and network - Cleveland Clinic Health System, Cleveland, Ohio. Linda Aiken, Ph.D., director of the Center for Health Outcomes and Policy Research and The Claire M. Fagin Leadership Professor of Nursing and Professor of Sociology at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia, is the individual award winner.
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