Macon Times

Atrium Health Navicent issued the following announcement. 

The Partnership for Health and Accountability (PHA) has presented four of its prestigious Patient Safety and Quality Awards to Atrium Health Navicent. These annual awards recognize Georgia health care organizations for achievement in reducing the risk of medical errors and improving patient safety and medical outcomes.

“These projects are examples of how Atrium Health Navicent teammates are living our culture commitments to ‘innovate to better the now and create the future,’ while earning trust and working ‘as one team to make great things happen’ in our continued ‘drive for excellence’,” said Atrium Health Navicent President and CEO Delvecchio Finley. “We’d like to thank the Partnership for Health and Accountability for recognizing our teammates’ work to improve patient safety and provide high quality care.”

Monroe County Hospital, an Atrium Health Navicent Partner, won second place in the Critical Access Hospitals category for its project “Safer Together: Maximizing Patient Safety Through Variance Reporting.” The project increased and destigmatized the reporting of incidents and near-miss events — or variances — which is shown to improve patient care. In addition to increasing access to reporting applications, a systematic method of review was developed. The work was completed by Monroe County Hospital’s Quality and Patient Safety team led by Quality Coordinator and Patient Safety Officer Chasatie Whitley.

Atrium Health Navicent won third place in the Hospitals with Greater Than 300 Beds category for its project “Collaborative Shows Early Success in Reducing MRSA,” which reduced MRSA infection rates. An interdisciplinary team worked to identify workflow barriers and employed strategies to improve infection prevention and control including fostering a partnership between health system teammates and patients and their family members. As a result of the project, teammates were able to grow skills and knowledge while refining and monitoring processes and outcomes to provide the safest, highest quality of care. Teammates from Infection Prevention, Patient Care Services, Environmental Services, Information Services and Education were key stakeholders in the project.

Atrium Health Navicent won third place in the Hospital/Health Systems category for its project “Radiation Dose Reduction for Computed Tomography Adult Brain.” The project studied ways to reduce the needed radiation dose for adult brain CT scans while continuing to provide quality images for radiologists. It resulted in new uniform protocols including patient positioning and other processes and a 15 percent reduction in radiation needed for the procedure. The work has been a key focus for Atrium Health Navicent’s Clinical Optimization Meso and Radiology Micro teams led by Radiology Education and Quality Coordinator Kristel Kirchner and Director of Radiology Twilla Hulett.

Atrium Health Navicent was also presented with a Circle of Excellence Award, an honor given to hospitals and health systems that have demonstrated a sustained commitment to quality and patient safety as evidenced by not only winning a patient safety award in 2021, but by earning three or more PHA Patient Safety Awards within the previous five years.

“Hospitals are diligently working each day to ensure the safety of their patients, especially in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic,” said Georgia Hospital Association President and CEO Earl Rogers. “We applaud Atrium Health Navicent and Monroe County Hospital for their successes and for making critical progress in patient safety while ensuring the best and safest care possible for patients.”

Original source can be found here.