Christiana Care Earns The Joint Commission's 2007 Ernest Amory Codman Award
The Joint Commission named Christiana Care a 2007 winner of the 11th annual Ernest Amory Codman Award. The award recognizes excellence in the use of outcomes measurement by health care organizations to achieve improvements in the quality and safety of health care.
Christiana Care is one of three recipients of the award in the hospital category and is recognized for an initiative to improve care for patients with sepsis, the leading cause of death for patients in intensive care units. The program resulted in reduced mortality rate for patients with severe sepsis to 30.2 percent from 61.7 percent during a two-year period.
Named for the physician regarded in health care as the 'father of outcomes measurement,' the Ernest Amory Codman Award showcases the effective use of performance measurement by health care organizations to improve the quality and safety of health care. The Joint Commission also recognizes an individual who has played a significant leadership role in promoting the use of performance measures to improve health care services, or who has made major contributions to the development and testing of performance measures or the science and art of quality improvement. A panel of national experts in quality measurement and improvement selected the seven recipients of the 2007 Awards.
'My colleagues and I are deeply honored by this recognition. The Codman Award reminds us of the good that we in the health profession can do when we share our talent and expertise,' says Robert J. Laskowski, M.D., president and chief executive officer of Christiana Care. 'The Codman Award inspires us to continue to be tireless in our pursuit of excellence.'
Christiana Care formed an interdisciplinary team in 2004 to address three major areas of sepsis care: identification of patients with sepsis, resuscitation strategies and ICU management. The resulting 'Sepsis Alert' program for all patients includes care management guidelines, treatment algorithms, order sets, kits with single-dose vials of antibiotics and multidisciplinary education about sepsis and the importance of prompt, aggressive management.
Christiana Care's program reduced the average length of hospital stay by 22.3 percent and increased patients discharged to home by 197.2 percent. Other improvements include increases (from 86 percent to 97 percent) in patients receiving antibiotic therapy within the first hour before or after issuance of a Sepsis Alert; decreased average time from emergency department triage to first antibiotic administration from 2.9 hours to less than two hours) and an increased percentage of patients receiving fluid resuscitation (92 percent to 100 percent).
Christiana Care will formally receive the award on Nov. 12, during The Joint Commission and Joint Commission Resources' Annual Conference on Quality and Safety in Chicago. Other award winners include hospital (two additional winners) - Broward General Medical Center, Fort Lauderdale, Florida, and St. Joseph Healthcare, Lexington, Kentucky; behavioral health care - Addiction Treatment Services of Johns Hopkins Bayview Medical Center; Baltimore, Maryland; long term care - Sea View Hospital Rehabilitation Center and Home, Staten Island, New York; and multiple organization - Seton Family of Hospitals, Austin, Texas. John E. Wennberg, M.D., M.P.H., who is director of the Center for Evaluative Clinical Sciences at Dartmouth Medical School on Lebanon, New Hampshire, is the individual award winner.
