Quality Initiatives

The following are examples of some quality and safety programs at Grady Health System that are a direct result of the collaboration of the healthcare team - leadership, staff, volunteers and patients:

• Rapid Response Teams
  Rapid Response Teams act as a support system to our nurses and physicians when they have a concern about a patient's condition. Our goal is to save lives through early interventions. The team may be called by staff and/or families.
• Fall Prevention Program
  Our program was designed to help identify all adult patients at risk of falling. This assessment is first conducted upon admission and then repeated every day for a patient's length of stay at the hospital.
• You Speak; We Listen Program
  Our patients are active members of their healthcare team. We have developed a program designed to encourage patients and their families to "speak up" concerning all aspects of their healthcare experience.
• Hand Hygiene Campaign
  We comply with current World Health Organization (WHO) hand hygiene guidelines. Grady expects all healthcare providers including physicians, nurses and staff to clean their hands before and after every patient contact. We encourage patient and family involvement in ensuring hand hygiene compliance.
• Pressure Ulcer Prevention
  Our goal is to eliminate pressure ulcers by preventing skin breakdown. Grady has a skin safety program that is used to evaluate and treat patients in order to reduce the incidence of pressure ulcers.
• Pain Resource Team
  The identification and management of pain is an important component of the plan of care for our patients. The Team supports our nurses and physicians in this vital endeavor.
• Best Practice Programs
  Teams of providers, nurses and support staff work together to change processes based on evidence-based approaches to improve outcomes.
• VHA Georgia
  We partner with VHA, a consortium of health systems and hospitals committed to improving patient outcomes, to collaborate and share best practices to improve healthcare in the communities we serve.
  
• Service Excellence Initiatives to Ensure the Patient Comes First
  Building on past initiatives to improve patient satisfaction, Grady Health System is moving ahead with aggressive steps to significantly enhance customer service, and hold employees and managers accountable for achieving service excellence standards.
• Advanced Clinical Information Systems: Electronic Medical Records (EMRs)
  Grady Health System is installing an advanced clinical information system to automate and streamline the flow of information between all of your care providers.
• Georgia Hospital Association - to the top 10
  By working with the Georgia Hospital Association and their collaborative partner, Institute of Healthcare Improvement, we are seeking out and implementing strategies to improve our quality of care.

Patient Safety
Grady Health System strives to provide outstanding safety practices for our patients, their families and our staff. We work closely with national and local regulatory agencies on all aspects of patient, medication and environmental safety.

National Patient Safety and Medical Error Reduction Initiatives
Improving patient and medication safety are top priorities for healthcare. Agencies such as the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ), National Quality Forum (NQF), Institute of Safe Medicine Practice (ISMP), Institute of Medicine (IOM), Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) and The Joint Commission are setting and monitoring national healthcare standards, which are presented to healthcare organizations as safety goals to be incorporated into their daily practices.

At Grady Health System, education concerning these goals is ongoing and compliance is mandatory for all staff.

National Patient Safety Goals

• NPSG 1: Improve the Accuracy of Patient Identification
• NPSG 2: Improve the Effectiveness of Communication Among Caregivers
• NPSG 3: Improve the Safety of Using Medications
• NPSG 7: Reduce the Risk of Healthcare -Associated Infections
• NPSG 8: Accurately and Completely Reconcile Medications Across the Continuum of Care
• NPSG 9: Reduce the Risk of Patient Harm Resulting from Falls
• NPSG 13: Encourage the active involvement of patients and their families in the patient's own care as a Patient Safety Strategy
• NSPG 15: The Organization Identifies Safety Risks Inherent in its Patient Population
• Universal Protocol (NPSG)

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