Betsy Hunsicker
CEO
The Joint Commission arrived Tuesday, October 25. It was four days — our nurse and physician surveyor showed up Tuesday and the life safety surveyor showed up Thursday. On Wednesday night, we were high-five-ing and feeling great about our clinical survey. The life safety survey was not nearly as much fun ...
In the end, we did great. Our old building got the best of us in a few places, but as far as patient safety and clinical care goes we absolutely knocked it out of the park. All of our daily checklists paid off as we had NOT ONE expired medication, missing crash cart check, missing temperature log or missing fire extinguisher check! No findings related to all the high-risk areas like restraints, sedation, medication safety and high-level disinfection. No findings in sterile processing, no findings related to staff competencies, no findings with medical staff processes and procedures. Not many hospitals can make that claim! We were complimented repeatedly on how well our staff did answering questions and describing the work they do to care for our patients.
The physician surveyor observed procedural time outs from Dr. Daines and Dr. Gardner, rating them far better than average, and Dr. Bradley received an A+ — best time-out he'd ever seen! The surveyors were also impressed with work our medical staff is doing with CVAT, antibiotic stewardship and multi-modal pain management programs. The physician surveyor (a retired anesthesiologist) was impressed by Dr. Cohen’s block-placing skills and Dr. Cornwell’s documentation of a patient that went to surgery from the ED was spotless. We had 3 records where there was a missing signature date or time, but as our quality director, Ron, said that’s a finding they have in the parking lot before they even enter the facility.
There were so many moments during the survey that made me proud. Hearing our pharmacists talk about their initiatives, hearing various nurses describe what they do in their care of the patients, watching various staff demonstrate their knowledge of instrument cleaning and sterile processing, seeing our physicians engage with surveyors ... it all reinforced what I already knew. We have great people doing great work to make sure we provided the highest quality care in a safe environment that supports their healing.
Thank you for all you do every day. I think that what we demonstrated during the survey is how we normally operate, and that is something we should all be proud of.
We Welcome Your Ideas!
This is the third quarterly edition of our Medical Staff News. I hope you are finding this to be informative. If you have any special requests for future communications, we would welcome your ideas! Please submit your ideas and suggestions for future issues to Wendy McClain at wendy.mcclain@hcahealthcare.com or (208) 477-3574.
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