Our Quality Journey
In 2002, Presbyterian Healthcare Services adopted the Baldrige National Quality Program (Baldrige Performance Excellence Program) to improve the quality, safety and reliability of care and service we provide for our patients and health plan members across New Mexico. Critical to our understanding of the Baldrige framework was our involvement with Quality New Mexico, a statewide organization that advocates the use of Baldrige principles. In 2004 Presbyterian won the Zia Award, the highest award from Quality New Mexico.
Also key to our quality journey has been the valuable feedback we have received following each of our Baldrige site visits which allow us to validate our best practices, identify opportunities for improvement and plan approaches for improvement. We also receive additional feedback from individual business units as part of their accreditation processes from organizations such as The Joint Commission and National Committee for Quality Assurance.
At Presbyterian we know that we are successful when we achieve excellent organizational results that have been driven by a clearly defined approach, a well-defined deployment plan, a commitment to continuous learning, and integration of our plans, processes, resources and measures. Some of the ongoing and recent projects that have helped us provide better care to our customers include:
· Pressure ulcer prevention in hospitalized patients resulting in a reduction from 18 percent incidence in 2007 to 4.99 percent (below the national average of 7 percent).
· Improved hand hygiene compliance to reduce the risk of hospital and clinic acquired infection and address the Joint Commission National Patient Safety Goal. Overall we increased our hand hygiene compliance from 39 to 92 percent compliance. The Methicillin Resistant Staphylococcus Aureus (MRSA) infection rate decreased 45 percent.
· Focusing on mortality reduction - we have seen a 13 percent reduction in the mortality rate in the first 10 months of 2010.
