St. Cloud Hospital Patient Safety

Joint Commission

Speak Up

Minnesota Adverse Health Event Report

Patient Safety Tips

St. Cloud Hospital Patient Safety

Your safety is central to every aspect of care within our hospital. It is the top priority at all levels of our organization including physicians, management, volunteers and staff throughout the hospital. The first step is in creating a Culture of Patient Safety in which information from outside sources and our own experiences is used to continually improve the care that we provide with special emphasis on prevention and in being proactive.

The St. Cloud Hospital Patient Safety Plan:

• Promotes involvement and partnering with each patient for their safety
• Ensures a safe patient environment throughout
• Provides accountability for patient safety
• Incorporates patient safety initiatives into all services
• Requires integration, reporting and communication of patient safety issues.

Key Safety Highlights

The following are a few of the countless steps our hospital is taking to promote and improve patient safety:

• We have a Patient Safety Committee in place to coordinate and guide the new priorities and efforts to make our hospital a safe place to receive your care. We also have a Medication Safety Committee specifically focused on evaluating and implementing new medication management methods in order to reduce the risk of error and harm from medications.
• We participate in the Minnesota Hospital Association’s Patient Safety Registry. This allows us to share safety resources and knowledge with hospitals across the state.
• We participate in Joint Commission quality measurements for the conditions of heart failure, heart attack and pneumonia.
• The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) ranked Minnesota 4th in the nation for providing quality care to Medicare patients.
• We have continually achieved Joint Commission accreditation.
• We participate in the Voluntary Hospitals of America (VHA) and the Minnesota Hospital Association (MHA) projects on patient safety initiatives.
• Our Magnet Designation process focuses heavily on qualifications of nurses and quality and patient safety improvements.
• Processes we have improved include:
  Diabetic care and insulin administration
  Administration of anticoagulants, such as heparin and coumadin
  Use of standardized patient care orders to ensure consistency
  Ensured accuracy of patient IV equipment
  Chemotherapy administration process
  Skin care and ulcer prevention
  Prevention of falls
  
• We have implemented the electronic medical record system for care and will be implementing computerized order entry in the next couple of years. 
• We have implemented a waterless hand-washing system to assist in control of infections.
• We have implemented the necessary reporting for the new Minnesota Adverse Event Reporting Law. 
• We have implemented the IHI Six Practices for the 100,000 Lives Campaign along with the 5 Million Lives Prevention of Harm Campaign.

We actively work to implement the Joint Commission National Patient Safety Goals with emphasis in these areas:

• Use of two patient identifiers for medications and other procedures
• Labeling of medications on and off the sterile field
• Labeling of speciments in the presence of the patient
• Hand-off communications (information given to the next patient's next care provider)
• Surgical site marking that involves the patient
• Verification of the procedure to be performed
• Read-back of verbal orders for accuracy
• Elimination of dangerous abbreviations
• Management of concentrated medications
• Identifying sound-alike, look-alike medications
• Reducing risk of harm from patient falls
• Ensuring that alarms on patient equipment can be heard
• Coordination of patient medications lists across different settings
• Encouraging our patients/families to "Speak Up" about any aspect of their care
• Reducing risk of infection
• Identifying patients at risk for suicide

To learn more about Patient Safety, please visit our Patient Safety Tips section.

Joint Commission

The Joint Commission is an organization that evaluates and accredits more than 15,000 health care organizations and programs in the United States. The Joint Commission’s state-of-the-art standards focus on patient safety and quality of care. Highly trained experts, including doctors, nurses, administrators and other health care professionals, serve as Joint Commission surveyors. They visit accredited health care organizations a minimum of once every three years to evaluate standards of compliance. Organizations voluntarily pursue accreditation.

In August 2007, St. Cloud Hospital underwent a five-day survey which resulted in Full Accreditation. This survey covered all St. Cloud Hospital departments, including Home Care/Hospice, Laboratory, Ambulatory Care and Behavioral Health Services.

If you have any concerns about patient care and safety at St. Cloud Hospital that the hospital staff has not addressed, please contact St. Cloud Hospital management at the address or phone number below. If you are not satisfied with the hospital's resolution of the matter, you may contact the Joint Commission by phone at 800-994-6610 or by e-mail at complaint@jointcommission.org.

Speak Up

St. Cloud Hospital works to create an environment of patient safety with a program titled Speak Up. This program urges patients to get involved in their care, and it provides information and advice on how they can make their care a positive experience. Learn more about the Speak Up program.

Minnesota Adverse Health Event Report

Minnesota was the first state to launch a system for detailed public reporting of hospital errors. A state law requires that hospitals report adverse health events to the Minnesota Hospital Association (MHA). Adverse health events include wrong-site surgery, falls, pressure ulcers and medication errors that cause patient death or disability. There are 28 of these events.

The purpose of reporting the events is to help hospitals focus on learning what went wrong – not whom to blame. Sharing the learning is key. When organizations share their knowledge and experiences with each other, all can benefit.

Once it is learned what went wrong, the adverse health event reporting law calls for hospitals to develop a plan to fix the problem and take steps to prevent it from happening again.

The sixth annual report, issued in January 2010, covered the time period of Oct. 7, 2008, through Oct. 6, 2009. St. Cloud Hospital reported 13 adverse events for this period.

To view the full report, please visit the Minnesota Department of Health.

We welcome any questions you may have about the report. You may contact us at the address or phone number below:
St. Cloud Hospital
1406 Sixth Avenue North
St. Cloud, MN 56303
Phone: 320-251-2700, ext. 54100