In the latest edition of its annual hospital rankings, released last quarter, St. Elizabeth Edgewood was also recognized as “High Performing” in multiple procedures and conditions by U.S. News & World Report, reflecting strong outcomes across a broad patient population.
High marks went to five areas related to cancer care, along with cardiology, diabetes and endocrinology, gastroenterology, geriatrics, nephrology, neurology and neurosurgery, obstetrics and gynecology, orthopedics, pulmonology and lung surgery, and urology. A designation for maternity care (uncomplicated pregnancies) earlier this year, brings the total to 20 areas in which the hospital excels.
Earning a “High Performing” rating in one area is no easy feat, but when you earn top ranks in many different areas it demonstrates a strong commitment to care across the system, said Dr. Latonya Brown, vice president and chief physician quality officer for St. Elizabeth Healthcare.
“It just speaks to how this organization is committed to improving the health of the community they serve,” she said.
“We invest in the best doctors, we invest in the latest and the greatest technology, we invest in our staff. And I think that because we are committed to those things, we can then translate that into, quick identification of problems, expeditiously initiating interventions to deal with those problems, and then caring for those patients throughout those illnesses and seeing that they get back into doing what they love with the people they love.”
No resting on laurels
With that said, Dr. Brown noted, in addition to those investments, is a commitment to transparency and continuous quality improvement that permeates throughout the hospital and the entire system.
“The interesting thing for us is we always want to do better. And so, while it’s always nice that it’s recognized that we’re doing a good job, if you talk to anybody in our staff, I don’t even know that they would recognize that we’re doing as well as we are, because we have so many initiatives in place to try to identify areas of opportunity and make it even better,” she said.
“While as a system we’re doing well, we recognize that it’s the contribution of all of the sub components to the whole that really make it work. And so we have a number of quality projects right now, looking at patient experience in certain areas where we don’t feel we’re performing as well as we’d like to.”
Committing to improvement
While the hospital has a number of nurse-driven improvement projects, a recently added initiative looks more closely at the provider component of patient care.
“We recognize that, while our nursing staff, by and large, carries the lion’s weight of interactions with patients on an ongoing basis throughout the day, every touch matters. Ensuring our providers are supportive of the patient experience is also very important. It’s something that we’ve identified as an area in which we would like to see improvement.”
The hospital has launched targeted initiatives as well in different departments throughout the hospital.
“Every single touch from the time the patient enters the door until the time they exit impacts their experience,” Dr. Brown said. “To ensure we can optimize the experience in the emergency department, whether that’s with environmental services or the EKG tech or the X-ray tech, we’ve actually pulled a multi-disciplinary team together to look at ways we can improve that experience.”
Setting higher goals
“I’ve been with St Elizabeth for over a decade, and I think that one of the other things that contributes to our success is that we try to be transparent,” Dr. Brown said. “We try to be transparent about the things that we do well, and we try to be equally as transparent about the things that we don’t do so well, and use those as opportunities to get better.”
Many of the quality improvement initiatives come out of honest and open conversations at meetings with management and with staff, she said.
“I think the other thing that I’m especially proud of is that we care a lot about harm prevention, and we utilize evidence-based practices to try to decrease the number of harms that we see across the system. I think that we sometimes set our goals a little bit higher than national goals, because we recognize that while we might not need them, we want to be doing whatever we can to keep the motivation there to consistently get better.”
Dr. Brown said, while it is wonderful to earn recognition and high ranks, the hospital remains focused on meeting challenges and identifying opportunities for improvement.
“I think we have a lot to be proud of. We’ve worked hard, and I think that the investments are paying off in leaps and bounds, but I don’t see us letting off the gas anytime soon.”
