Innovative Care at Illinois Hospitals

Three Illinois hospitals received recognition for “delivering quality with distinction” by the Illinois Hospital Association Institute for Innovations in Care and Quality. Three more hospitals were runners-up, all part of the institute's third annual Quality Excellence Achievement Awards.

Health care system award recipient Memorial Health System in Springfield used Lean Six Sigma methodologies to reduce hospital-acquired pressure ulcers. Process defects were identified for pressure ulcer prevention (PUP), including identifying at-risk patients, achieving minimal turning requirements and coordinating care across units and shifts. The health system developed a PUP kit and Team-Up to Turn approach, among other key improvements, and reduced its HAPU prevalence rate by 79 percent.

The IHA's urban hospital award recipient was the Ann & Robert H. Lurie Children's Hospital of Chicago for its SOS: Save Our Skin initiative to prevent pressure ulcers in infants and children. For children younger than five years, ulcers on the back part of the head or spine are most common, painful and can lead to infection as well as permanent hair loss, scarring and embarrassment. A skin care committee developed a Pressure Ulcer Prevention Program (PUPP), modeled after another successful collaborative; PUPP includes staff education, individualized preventive care measures and more. Ongoing data collection helps staff monitor compliance, sustainability and improved patient outcomes.

Advocate Eureka Hospital, the IHA's rural/critical access hospital award recipient, assembled a team to focus on fall prevention. After an increase in patient falls, the hospital moved beyond a “simple” quality improvement project and focused on sustaining a change in culture. Corporate-sponsored fall prevention initiatives and staff awareness campaigns were supported by site-specific efforts that have sustained a reduction in patient falls and increased patient safety.

HPOE and the IHA are partnering to highlight case studies from these award-winning hospitals, runners-up and all award applicants.