Congratulations to Providence Mount Carmel Hospital in Colville for winning WSHA’s 2022 Rural Quality Everyday Extraordinary Award for its falls reduction program! The program was able to reduce patient falls by 42 percent and patient falls with injury between 2020 and 2021. WSHA presented the award to Mount Carmel at the 2022 Leadership Summit in Walla Walla this week.
The falls reduction program began in July 2020 when caregivers noticed an increase in patient falls in the months prior in the acute care unit. They determined the cause stemmed not from a lack of completing falls assessments, but in inconsistent interventions to prevent falls and in inconsistent practice in determining who is at risk of falling.
The new program created standardized signage with yellow armbands and socks, implemented the Falls TIPS (Tailoring Interventions for Patient Safety) program, created a “no pass zone” that creates a culture where everyone on staff has responsibility to ensure patient needs and safety are met, and implemented dementia education to increase awareness of challenging behaviors that can increase patient falls. The program was so successful that they shared the program with sister hospital Providence St. Joseph Hospital in Chewelah 22 miles away.
We are proud to recognize Mount Carmel with this award, which represents a model of hospital safety improvement, as the hospital analyzed the problem, developed a plan, implemented it and tracked the results with hard data.
Congratulations to Mount Carmel and all the other nominees for the 2022 award! The other nominees were PeaceHealth United General Medical Center for its sepsis prevention program, Ocean Beach Hospital for its transitional care management/medication reconciliation program, Mason Health for its work meeting patient language needs, Skyline Health for its work with population health management, and Providence St. Joseph Hospital for its falls prevention work.
We are pleased to announce that we are now accepting nominations year-round for the Rural Quality Everyday Extraordinary Award, so if you have a quality improvement project ready to be shared, we encourage you to apply!
Sincerely,
Darcy Jaffe
WSHA Senior Vice President, Safety & Quality
darcyj@wsha.org
