The Georgia Hospital Association (GHA) recently awarded North Fulton Regional Hospital 2nd Place in the 2007 PHA Quality and Patient Safety Awards for the 100-299 beds category and 3rd Place in the Josh Nahum Infection Prevention and Control Achievement Category. The presentation of these awards took place at GHA’s Patient Safety Summit on January 8 in Greensboro, Georgia.

As an award recipient, North Fulton Regional Hospital sent Director of Quality Management, Kathy Young, RN, BSN, CIC, to the summit to present the hospital’s award-winning project.

“In 2004, the Infection Control Committee, guided by the physician chairman Dr. David Dickensheets, focused on decreasing the hospital’s VAP [ventilator associated pneumonia]
infection rate as an important patient safety initiative,” said Young. “This evolved in the Infection Control Department as we developed a team approach to decrease the hospital’s rate of infection.”

According to Young, patients placed on ventilators are at risk for developing a hospital acquired ventilator associated infection. This serious complication usually increases the patient’s stay in the critical care unit, increases the overall length of hospital stay, and adds to costs. VAP hospital acquired infections are also the most common of all hospital acquired infections, which contribute to death as presented at the International Conference for the Development of Consensus on the Diagnosis and Treatment of Ventilator Associated Pneumonia.

In August 2004, the team, which included the Chief Nursing Officer, Director of Critical Care, Infection Control Practitioner, Infectious Disease Physician and representatives from Pharmacy, Respiratory Care, Clinical Education, Clinical Nutrition and Critical Care, identified three quality improvement initiatives:

• Develop an education program for all Critical Care Staff to educate them about VAP and to cover best practice strategies;
• Change the oral care practice from every eight hours to every four hours;
• And provide daily reminders for the new oral care and patient-positioning practices to promote adherence to the new policies.

The team continued its work in 2005 as it committed to decrease the use of registry staff and implement evidence-based “best” practices. The continuity, cooperation and team spirit among the staff were felt to make a difference in the infection rate.

During the years that followed, the team continued to implement preventive interventions
that led to significant reductions in the VAP rate. By 2007 the rate of ventilator associated pneumonia, which had reached its peak in 2004 at 15.5 infections per 1,000 ventilator days, had dropped to a mere 0.7 per 1,000 ventilator days, a reduction of 95.5 percent. As of the end of August 2007, the hospital had not had a VAP infection for seven months.

The Patient Safety Summit is sponsored by the Georgia Hospital Association (GHA) Research and Education Foundation and the Partnership for Health and Accountability (PHA).

North Fulton Regional Hospital (NFRH), part of Tenet Georgia, is a 202-bed, acute-care hospital located on Highway 9, Alpharetta Highway, in Roswell. Opened in 1983, NFRH serves North Fulton and surrounding counties through its team of over 1000 employees, 400 staff physicians and 200 volunteers. NFRH is a state-designated Level II trauma center and provides a continuum of services through its centers and programs, including neurosciences, orthopedics, rehabilitation, surgical services, bariatric surgical weight loss, gastroenterology and oncology. The hospital is fully accredited and also is certified as a Primary Stroke Center by the Joint Commission on the Accreditation of Healthcare Organizations, the nation’s oldest and largest hospital accreditation agency.

For more information about any of the programs and services of North Fulton Regional Hospital, call 770-751-2500, or visit www.northfultonregional.com.