Quality Reports

As a result of the Institute of Medicine’s national report, To Err is Human, Building a Safer Health System, a significant paradigm shift has begun in American hospitals. The landmark report outlined the fragmentation of healthcare services and the need to use innovation in driving safer and more efficient patient care.

This program eliminates the silo effect of multiple departmental interventions and streamlines patient care, case management, discharge planning and patient safety practices. Using highly experienced, critical care nurses, called "care coordinators," these nurses partner with physicians to facilitate the national core measures, patient safety goals, infection avoidance, discharge planning and appropriate health services utilization. The care coordinators act as a “second set of eyes” assisting the physicians, bedside nurses and healthcare team with patient-care needs. The coordinators work with complex and high-risk patients to maximize quality care.

The program is a “high-bred” model of original clinical case management programs that standardize care across diagnostic continuums. The coordinators focus on patient needs in acute care and rehabilitation services from admission to discharge. The program is the first of its kind to combine all anticipatory quality and safety needs for optimum planning and complication prevention. The model builds on the success of the Alvarado Hospital Core Measure Program, which implemented more than 25 action steps to improve care for complex patients, including extensive physician and staff education, formulation of quality teams, weekly reporting of compliance progress and distribution of medical literature on key diagnoses.

This program resulted in rapid improvements in compliance with the national core measures by employing registered nurses to work with physicians during a patient’s hospitalization to facilitate use of the national core measures recommendations. The core measures are founded on evidence-based medicine practices promoted by leading organizations, such as the American Heart Association and Centers for Disease Control. These practices are also reported to the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid, Joint Commission, health plans and public Web sites.

Alvarado Hospital is committed to surpassing compliance rates for these quality measures as displayed by recent data reports for community-acquired pneumonia (CAP). CAP is a serious diagnosis affecting millions of Americans each year. As the American population ages, pneumonia is an increasing problem in U.S. hospitals. The California Hospital Assessment and Reporting Task Force and the Office of Statewide Healthcare Planning and Development (OSHPD) has rated Alvarado Hospital “Superior” and “Better than Expected,” respectively, in pneumonia quality care. Alvarado Hospital is now focusing on surpassing state and national measures in other key diagnoses including heart attack, heart failure, diabetes and cardiac surgery.

Already in 2008, Alvarado Hospital has reached 95% compliance with the American Heart Association’s recommendation for heart attack care.  These diagnoses continue to be the predominant make-up of Alvarado Hospital's medical patient population. Alvarado also is focusing on many community-based healthcare services for patients impacted by these illnesses