SSM Health improves hospital-acquired infections
April 27, 2024 07:00 PM - Hospital-acquired infections are serious and preventable harm events. In 2019, the agency for Healthcare Research and Quality estimated a hospital acquired infection costs the U.S. healthcare system $31,000. Certain infections increased the total cost of the hospital stay by more than 50 percent. Patients with preventable hospital-acquired infections were more likely to be readmitted within 90 days.
Recently, Dr. Shephali Wulff, DO, System Vice President of Quality and Safety, Chief Quality Officer, and Chris Zirges, System Director of Infection Prevention, participated in Vizient’s podcast, “Hospital acquired infection improvement journey.” They shared how SSM Health improved patient safety and quality by standardizing processes across the system resulting in a 60 percent infection reduction and a $10M cost savings.
Prior to 2018 and before becoming an integrated health delivery system, SSM Health hospitals had varying approaches for some patient safety initiatives. In 2019, a System Infectious Disease (ID) team consisting of systemwide infectious diseases physicians, infection preventionists, microbiology and stewardship and infectious diseases pharmacists came together to focus on preventing hospital-acquired infections (HAI), and improving patient safety and quality through the lens of infectious diseases and infection prevention.
“These infections are preventable, and it is important to come together as a team to develop a sustainment plan,” said Zirges. “The best way to achieve this is to ensure that visibility of HAI prevention efforts are always a part of our daily work by reporting out during daily safety huddles.”
As part of the integration work, the team also centralized the HAI data at a system level.
The System ID team joined subject matter experts that included critical care, emergency medicine physicians, hospitalists, nursing practice leaders, environmental services, supply chain and other health partners, who came together as an organization to develop best practice guidelines to prevent the three most common hospital acquired infections.
These evidence-based best practices were collated into change packages called “reduction guides” in partnership with Continuous Improvement. They then partnered with the point of care teams to deliver these guides, worked closely with them to understand existing variation, and then narrowed the variation gap. After two years, this work resulted in a reduction of catheter urinary tract, central line associated blood stream, and hospital associated onset Clostridioides - difficile infections.
“As we think about improvement, it is important to listen to our point of care teams that do the work every day to ensure this process improvement plan really makes sense within their workflow,” said Wulff. “They help us determine where in the patient journey we can improve patient safety.”
Recently, Dr. Shephali Wulff, DO, System Vice President of Quality and Safety, Chief Quality Officer, and Chris Zirges, System Director of Infection Prevention, participated in Vizient’s podcast, “Hospital acquired infection improvement journey.” They shared how SSM Health improved patient safety and quality by standardizing processes across the system resulting in a 60 percent infection reduction and a $10M cost savings.
Prior to 2018 and before becoming an integrated health delivery system, SSM Health hospitals had varying approaches for some patient safety initiatives. In 2019, a System Infectious Disease (ID) team consisting of systemwide infectious diseases physicians, infection preventionists, microbiology and stewardship and infectious diseases pharmacists came together to focus on preventing hospital-acquired infections (HAI), and improving patient safety and quality through the lens of infectious diseases and infection prevention.
“These infections are preventable, and it is important to come together as a team to develop a sustainment plan,” said Zirges. “The best way to achieve this is to ensure that visibility of HAI prevention efforts are always a part of our daily work by reporting out during daily safety huddles.”
As part of the integration work, the team also centralized the HAI data at a system level.
The System ID team joined subject matter experts that included critical care, emergency medicine physicians, hospitalists, nursing practice leaders, environmental services, supply chain and other health partners, who came together as an organization to develop best practice guidelines to prevent the three most common hospital acquired infections.
These evidence-based best practices were collated into change packages called “reduction guides” in partnership with Continuous Improvement. They then partnered with the point of care teams to deliver these guides, worked closely with them to understand existing variation, and then narrowed the variation gap. After two years, this work resulted in a reduction of catheter urinary tract, central line associated blood stream, and hospital associated onset Clostridioides - difficile infections.
“As we think about improvement, it is important to listen to our point of care teams that do the work every day to ensure this process improvement plan really makes sense within their workflow,” said Wulff. “They help us determine where in the patient journey we can improve patient safety.”
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Dr. Shephali Wulff, DO, System Vice President of Quality and Safety, Chief Quality Officer and Chris Zirges, System Director of Infection Prevention
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