Outstanding Quality Improvement and Innovation Awards

Outstanding Quality Improvement and Innovation Awards

Outstanding innovations from the Canterbury health system have been recognised this week at the Canterbury District Health Board (Canterbury DHB) Quality Improvement and Innovation Awards.

The awards first began in 2003 to recognise, reward, and showcase quality improvement and innovation projects.

This year's awards ceremony was held at the Show Gate, Riccarton Park yesterday (November 20) for the following categories: Best Value for Public Health System Resources; Improved Quality, Safety and Experience of Care; Improved Health and Equity for Populations.

David Meates, Canterbury DHB chief executive, says the awards are a great way to recognise the innovative work of staff dedicated to improving the health and wellbeing of people throughout Canterbury.

"It’s a privilege to have such remarkable people working in the Canterbury health system,” Mr Meates says.

“We have incredibly innovative staff who are committed to excellence and delivering patient centred care. These awards are a chance to showcase the best of the best in making our health system better.”

Susan Wood, Director, Quality and Patient Safety, says the 18 entrants from across the Canterbury health system all deserve to be congratulated.

"The work and effort that’s gone into each project entry is outstanding and they all contribute to our goal of: no wait, no harm, no waste,” Susan says.

“We are privileged to have dedicated staff that are so committed to improving the quality of care and services delivered across the Canterbury Health System.”

The successful recipients of this year's Canterbury DHB Quality Improvement and Innovation Awards:

Supreme Award Winners

eSCRV- Shared Care Record View

Reducing Pneumonia in the Stroke Population

Improved Health & Equity for All Populations

Award Winner: eSCRV- Shared Care Record View

Runner-up: The Wellbeing Game

Improved Quality, Safety & Experience of Care

Award Winner: Classification and Communication of Caesarean Section

Runner-up: Canterbury Ski Fields Project

Best Value for Public Health System Resources

Award Winner: Shorter Turnaround Time for Urine Analysis in Microbiology

Joint Runner-up: Reducing Pneumonia in the Stroke Population

Joint Runner-up: Cardiac Catheter Laboratory Optimisation Project

Highly Commended: Script 4 Change, From High Tea to the Empowered Me, Collaborative Care Programme

Consumer Council Award: Collaborative Care Programme

Background information on winning projects

eSCRV – The 2011 Canterbury earthquakes motivated the Canterbury health system to work together to create a secure electronic, patient-centric view of data to provide a ‘single-source’ of up-to-date patient information, allowing timely safe and effective care of the patient through more informed decisions.

Reducing pneumonia in the stroke population This project evaluated the effectiveness of introducing a standardised cough reflex test protocol, which combined with intensive nursing and therapist education, has changed clinical practice with acute stroke patient at Christchurch Hospital. The clear clinical management protocol has contributed to more than halving the pneumonia rate from 26 percent to 11 percent. With aspiration pneumonia adding $9000 to an individual stroke patient’s cost of admission and with more than 1000 strokes per year in the Canterbury DHB, this change in clinical practice has potentially saved $1.4 million to the organisation. More importantly for the patient, this means there are fewer complications to a dysphagic stroke patient’s care.

The Wellbeing Game

The Wellbeing Game (TWBG) engages participants in the active use of evidence-based, health promoting strategies. By tracking hours spent using the ‘Five Ways to Wellbeing’ on an interactive, purpose-designed website and competing as a team, participants become aware of activities that support their mental wellbeing, and are inspired to take more action to improve it.

Classification and Communication of Caesarean Section

In December 2011 a multi-disciplinary working group was set up to develop the Classification and Communication for Caesarean Section Guideline following a recommendation to improve systems. The project included developing a Obstetric Surgical Safety Checklist, adapted from the WHO Surgical Safety Checklist for Maternity Cases Only (National Patient Safety Agency, 2010), establishing an ‘obstetric emergency team, erecting comprehensive signage to explain the emergency call system and emergency team composition and holding education sessions for 400 health professionals in preparation for implementation of the guideline on 10 December 2012.

Canterbury Ski Fields Project

The Emergency Care Coordination Team (ECCT) had a vision of providing a forum for Emergency personnel to meet with all Canterbury Ski fields to discuss patient care and correct transfer of patient to the required Hospital across the Canterbury Region to improve the patient journey. The focus was on greater awareness and understanding of each emergency personnel roles and responsibilities, with the end goal of minimising risk to patients by ensuring they get to the most appropriate destination for the highest quality treatment within the shortest timeframe possible.

Shorter turnaround time for urine analysis in Microbiology: better for patient, better for clinician, better for the health system

The microbiology laboratory at Canterbury Health Laboratories (CHL) receives over 53,000 urine samples annually, making urinalysis one of the highest volume testing areas. The project involved introducing new protocols and workflow along with some modification of staffing hours. The outcome was a greatly improved workflow, fewer errors (from an average of 8/day to an average of less than 1/day), happier staff and significantly reduced turn-around-time for both microscopy results and culture results to clinicians (from an average of nearly 2.8 days for final results to a recent low of 1.2 days).

Cardiac Catheter Laboratory Optimisation Project (Phase II)

The Cardiac Catheter Laboratory ‘Cath Lab’ Optimisation Project was instigated in response to long patient wait times for laboratory procedures and general staff dissatisfaction. The main outcomes of the project include a 31 percent increase in the number of procedures undertaken in the Lab (without any permanent increase in hours of operation), a 20 percent reduction in length of stay for all cardiology patients and a 17.5 percent reduction in call-outs for Cath Lab staff.

Script 4 Change

The Ministry of Health set a target that all patients have medicine reconciliation within 24hrs of admission to hospital. Script 4 Change was a pharmacy initiative developed to meet this target. It has contributed to quality improvements in the clinical pharmacy service by ensuring more timely patient care, raising the pharmacy profile and increasing job satisfaction.

From High Tea to the Empowered Me – Improving Services for Women in Secure Mental Health Care

The Canterbury Regional Forensic service developed an audit tool for use with female service users, which was subsequently adopted as a national tool and used in each of the Regional Services. Audit results have lead to service improvements and changes for women accessing secure mental health care in Canterbury. Changes have included the development of open and closed group work, enhancing and creating women-only environments and expanding the range of gender appropriate resources and activities available to women entering our service.

Collaborative Care Programme

The Collaborative Care Programme is delivering the change required for integrated and coordinated patient care to help realise the Canterbury DHB’s ‘One Health System’ vision. It supports and enables proactive care and self-management of people with long-term or complex health needs. The goal of providing right care in right place at right time requires an integrated, coordinated and collaborative approach.

ENDS

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