Case Study: Goodall Hospital

Goodall Hospital is a 53-bed, not-for-profit, acute care hospital located in Sanford, Maine. The hospital has been an IHM member for a little over a year. In addition to using AIES and PQMS, Goodall Hospital has been a beta test site for Infection Alert, IHM’s real-time infection monitoring system.

AIES

Goodall Hospital is accredited by the Joint Commission, and it reports on the CHF, AMI, SCIP, and PN core measures sets. Before Goodall started using AIES, all of its quality indicator data were abstracted from charts or from Meditech either by hand or by using the program CART (CMS Abstraction and Reporting Tool). Since the introduction of AIES, data abstraction has become much easier and can be accomplished more quickly than before, according to Mary Finnegan, the Director of Performance Improvement at Goodall. "AIES has been a valuable source of a wealth of quality data, from the core measures that Medicare requires to individual departmental indicators that are part of our own quality program," said Finnegan. "When we changed over to AIES from our previous method of data gathering, I ran both systems in parallel to compare them. I found that the data in AIES is just as accurate, and it’s far easier to use. The abstraction tools are much more user-friendly." AIES has proven so useful at Goodall Hospital that a large number of staff now use it on a regular basis.

PQMS

On the credentialing and privileging side, the staff at Goodall have found PQMS to be a valuable tool for satisfying the new Joint Commission requirement for an ongoing review of all physicians. Using PQMS, the Clinical Quality committee has been able to more easily identify outliers and to look at trends in care, such as transfers or readmissions. "With the ongoing review, we are doing more frequent physician report cards—quarterly instead of annually. The PQMS data have been very helpful for us in that regard," said Finnegan. "The physicians that are directors of departments have using the PQMS data to look at individual practitioners’ rates of return visits and complications. It’s been a very good tool for us."

Infection Alert

In February 2008, Goodall Hospital agreed to become a beta test site for IHM’s newest product, Infection Alert, which is designed to deliver daily, real-time information to help hospital staff quickly recognize and manage inpatient infections. Infection Alert extracts data from the past 24 to 72 hours from nursing and physician notes, pharmacy, and microbiology and laboratory. "It grabs all kinds of useful data that I either had to collect from different computer programs or by actually going to the chart. I use it on a daily basis," said Shannon Davila, the Infection Control Practitioner at Goodall. "IHM is making sure that Infection Alert is being designed by and for Infection Control practitioners, which is great."

One critically important part of Davila’s job is to track and prevent urinary catheterrelated infections, since Medicare and Medicaid will no longer reimburse for those costs as of October 2008. Before using Infection Alert, Davila handed out sheets to each unit and asked them record the patients who were catheterized each day, but she found that it was impossible for most units to keep up. Infection Alert has helped immensely in that regard. "Infection Alert lets me see in real time all the patients in the house who had a catheter in the past 24 or 72 hours. If it looks like someone is becoming infected, I can go to the floor and talk with the nurses to find out what is being done and if the physician is aware of the problem. It makes life a lot easier."

In sum, Goodall Hospital has found that IHM’s products offer a good return on investment. "IHM’s products offer us a wealth of information. They just bring everything in together and are very user-friendly," said Finnegan. "IHM has been great to work with."

Davila added, "They’ve been fantastic! Infection Alert has made a real difference in my practice."

For more information about how IHM can work with your hospital, contact IHM today:

      Jodie Imbriano | jodie.imbriano@healthmetrics.org | (516) 629-6368
      Institute for Health Metrics
      One New England Executive Park | Burlington, MA 01803
      http://www.healthmetrics.org