Quality Initiatives
Southern New Hampshire Medical Center is committed to continuously improving the quality of care provided in all patient care settings. At The Medical Center, quality serves as the foundation for everything we do. Patient safety and high reliability make up the building blocks of this solid foundation.
Click here to compare hospital performance on clinical quality measures with other hospitals in New Hampshire ►
Click here to learn more about our accreditations ►
Southern New Hampshire Medical Center’s cancer program has earned a three-year Approval Award with Commendation from the Commission on Cancer with an overall rating of “1” in the Community Hospital Cancer program category and commendations in seven areas. No deficiencies were cited. Only one in four hospitals nationwide receive approval from the Commission.
In Pursuit of Clinical Excellence
The Medical Center’s physicians and nurses base their practices on the best scientific evidence available, combined with skill and experience. We have over 200 protocols and checklists which promote best practice for such high volume diagnoses as pneumonia, congestive heart failure, heart attacks, and surgical care.
We benchmark our clinical performance against national organizations such as the National Quality Forum (NQF), whose clinical consensus and safety measures we use as benchmarks, and
AHRQ (Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality), whose validated employee/staff survey we use to identify opportunities for improvement
. The
Joint Commission and the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) are also key standard bearers.
In the fall of 2006, The Medical Center earned accreditation as a Magnet hospital by the American Nurses Credentialing Center, making it one of only 231 hospitals nationwide that are currently designated Magnet facilities.
The American College of Surgeons has recognized our cancer program with a three year accreditation with commendation, an additional recognition for the level of cancer care we provide at The Medical Center. For more information, check out our cancer care page and our cancer committee report.
Another way we foster continuous improvement in clinical practice is through the Annual Medical Center Quality Fair.
A Culture of Safety
The hospital fosters a culture in which all of our staff and physicians are responsible for working with patients, families and each other to ensure patient safety. We are proud to participate in national initiatives such as:
Medication Safety
Medication Safety is a priority for all of our clinical and administrative staff. Adverse drug events have been identified as the most frequent cause of patient harm in health care. For that reason we take part in the IHI’s 5 Million Lives Campaign initiative, “Prevention of Adverse Drug Events by Implementing Medication Reconciliation and Prevention of Harm from High Alert Medications.” We report and track all medication events including near misses and errors. Our goal is to provide the best possible drug therapy for each patient and to minimize the risks of all types of unintended drug effects.
Perinatal Care Improvement Project
The BirthPlace team at Southern New Hampshire Medical Center has just completed a two year project with IHI's “IMPACT Learning and Innovation Community on Improving Perinatal Care.” The team focused on three main areas: Improving the Safety, Effectiveness and Reliability of Care; Increasing “Patient-Centeredness” and Ensuring a Timely and Efficient System. Specific accomplishments included: working with Dartmouth to set standards for interpretation of Electronic Fetal Monitoring for physicians, midwives and nurses, simulation training for all providers and nursing staff, morning communication huddles for the entire team, and adoption of evidence based order sets and checklists to ensure the best possible care. The goal is to eliminate all preventable harm from the childbirth experience for both mother and child.
Surgical Care Improvement Project
Ensuring that the quality of care given to our surgical patients is based on national best practice initiatives is another area to which the physicians and staff of Southern New Hampshire Medical Center are dedicated. As part of IHI’s 5 Million Lives Campaign, the Medical Center tracks eight performance indicators. The Medical Center’s composite score of 90% is significantly above state (78%) and national (56.3%) benchmarks and places us in the top 10th percentile of performers nationally. The goal of this project is to reduce the incidence of surgical complications across the nation by 25% by the year 2015.
Patient Satisfaction
Our goal is to be in the top ten percent nationally in patient satisfaction. The Medical Center partners with Press Ganey to survey patients to determine how we are measuring up to that goal. We participate in HCAHPS,
which provides a standardized instrument and data collection methodology for measuring patients’ perspectives on hospital care. Many departments at The Medical Center also conduct point of care surveys to further understand patient needs and craft services which meet those needs.
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