Our Safety Practices

National Quality Forum Focus Area:
Preventing adverse events associated with a medication error, such as the wrong drug, wrong dose, wrong patient, wrong time, wrong rate, wrong preparation or wrong route of administration.

The Leapfrog Group Performance Measures:
Safe medication administration and doctors ordering medications through a computer.

Our Safety Practices:

• Computer use: Our providers enter medication information into a computer, which produces standardized, legible and complete orders. The computer also alerts prescribers of any potential warnings (e.g., drug-allergy interaction or drug-drug interaction).
• Barcode scanning: Our nurses use medication barcode scanning to improve medication safety. The nurse scans the patient’s wristband and scans the barcode on the medication. This confirms the correct patient, drug, dose, time and route for safe medication administration.

National Quality Forum Focus Area:
Preventing adverse events associated with surgery or procedures, such as retained foreign objects.

The Leapfrog Group Performance Measure:
Avoiding dangerous objects left in patient’s body during a surgical procedure.

Our Safety Practices:

• Universal safety policy: Organization-wide standardized policy and procedure for the prevention of retained foreign objects during surgery, founded on evidence-based practice.
• Accounting for instruments: Counts of sponges, needles, sharps and/or instruments are performed multiple times before, during and after the surgical procedure to ensure all have been accounted for.
• Surgery checklists: Strict adherence to safe surgery checklists, which include instrument and supply counts.

National Quality Forum Focus Area:
Preventing adverse events associated with care management, such as Stage 3, Stage 4 and unstageable pressure ulcers acquired after admission to a healthcare setting.

The Leapfrog Group Performance Measure:
Avoiding dangerous bed sores.

Our Safety Practices:

• Four Eyes in Four Hours Skin Assessment: All patients admitted to the hospital have a head-to-toe skin assessment performed by two registered nurses. Based on the assessment, therapeutic interventions to prevent skin breakdown are implemented. Skin assessments are performed each shift to assess for any changes.
• Preventing immobility: Immobility during hospitalization can cause pressure injuries. Patients are turned and repositioned frequently, and special mattresses or pressure-relieving devices are used to relieve pressure associated with positioning.
• Nutrition support: A healthy diet can help prevent pressure injuries. For patients at risk, registered dietitians are consulted to complete a comprehensive nutrition assessment and an individualized nutritional plan.