Honorees of PDC's Partner in Patient Safety Success Story Contest

3 Winners of $1,000 in PDC Products

Holy Spirit Hospital - on behalf of the Color of Safety Task Force Camp Hill, Pennsylvania

Patient Safety Success Story:
Banding Together for Patient Safety: Alert-Band Standardization

Submitted by:
Franchesca J. Charney, RN
Director of Risk Management/Patient Safety

Holy Spirit Hospital is part of the pioneering group of Pennsylvania hospitals that began standardizing color coded wristbands to reduce the risks of confusion to patients and caregivers associated with lack of consistency in wristband meanings. Due to these ground-breaking patient safety efforts, hospitals across the USA are adopting these color coded alert band standards, implementations and procedures.

View PDF of Holy Spirit Patient Safety Story

About Holy Spirit Hospital

Holy Spirit Hospital is a 332-bed acute care facility located in Camp Hill, Pa. The hospital has more than 550 physicians on staff and offers a comprehensive array of inpatient and outpatient services, including pre- and post-hospital care. Holy Spirit Health System owns and operates six family health centers, a pediatrics practice, a women’s health center, an internal medicine practice, an endocrinology practice, a home health agency and a pre-hospital provider. Visit: www.hsh.org

Lutheran Medical Center Brooklyn, New York

Patient Safety Success Story:
Maximizing Technology and Practice to Improve Medication Infusion Safety

Submitted by:
Rosanne Raso, RN
Senior Vice President of Nursing Services

Lutheran Medical Center recognized that 35% of all medication errors that resulted in significant harm were the result of infusion pump errors primarily due to incorrect programming of the infusion parameter. Lutheran's patient safety improvements combined its "commitment with technology" with testing and implementations, vendor involvement, designing a custom drug library specific to its institution's needs and included the support and teamwork from its nursing, pharmacy and prescribing clinicians. In two years, they experienced significant reduction in infusion-related medical events and by 2008 recorded "a 100% decrease."

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About Lutheran Medical Center

A Level I Trauma Center and Stroke Center, Lutheran Medical Center (LMC) has cared for Brooklyn communities since 1883. As a full service 476-bed teaching hospital, LMC is the hub of Lutheran HealthCare, a network of primary, acute and long-term care centers in southwest Brooklyn. The LMC Surgical Weight Loss Institute is the only program in Brooklyn to be designated as a Center of Excellence by the American Society for Bariatric Surgery while also holding a Level 1 Accreditation from the American College of Surgeons. Learn more about LMC and its commitment to patient care excellence, community service, health education and research online at www.LutheranMedicalCenter.com.

UPMC Presbyterian Shadyside University of Pittsburgh Medical Center Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania

Pateint Safety Success Story:
Ticket to Ride Program: Providing Safe Intra-Hospital Transport

Submitted by:
Darlene Lovasik, RN
Advanced Practice Nurse

UPMC Presbyterian Shadyside's Ticket to Ride focuses on internal transportation of the patient within the hospital, particularly when the patients leave their assigned hospital bed to go to another department for a diagnostic test and/or procedure. Working as a team with several UPMC Presbyterian Shadyside departments to develop a standardized model of patient transportation within the hospital, the program showed large hand-off error decreases and substantial increases patient satisfaction. With this success, the Ticket to Ride is intended to spread throughout the other system hospitals.

View PDF of UPMC Presbyterian Shadyside Story

About UPMC Presbyterian Shadyside

UPMC is an integrated global health enterprise headquartered in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, and one of the leading nonprofit health systems in the United States. As western Pennsylvania’s largest employer, with 50,000 employees and $7 billion in revenue, UPMC is transforming the economy of the region into one based on medicine, research, and technology. By integrating 20 hospitals, 400 doctors’ offices and outpatient sites, long-term care facilities, and a major insurance plan, UPMC has advanced the quality and efficiency of health care and developed internationally renowned programs in transplantation, cancer, neurosurgery, psychiatry, orthopaedics, and sports medicine, among others. UPMC is commercializing its medical and technological expertise by nurturing new companies, developing strategic business relationships with some of the world’s leading multinational corporations, and expanding into international markets, including Italy, Ireland, the United Kingdom, and Qatar. For more information about UPMC, visit our website at www.upmc.com.