San Juan Regional Health

FARMINGTON, NM (September 28, 2017) – San Juan Regional Medical Center is the proud recipient of four Certificates for Excellence in Quality Improvement from HealthInsight New Mexico. San Juan Regional Medical Center’s President and CEO, Jeff Bourgeois, and Chief Nursing Officer, Suzanne Smith, accepted the awards at the New Mexico Hospital Association Annual Meeting on September 27 in Albuquerque.

“Our goal is to become a world class healthcare organization because that’s what our community deserves. Improving the quality of our patient care is a top priority for us, as evidenced by the projects we’ve undertaken. Thanks to the great work done by our physicians, clinicians and all the members of our team, we are seeing positive results and continuously improving. At the end of the day, it’s our patients who will benefit,” Bourgeois said.

Here’s a little bit more about the four quality improvement projects the hospital was recognized for:

ED Arrival to Provider Contact

To accommodate the significant increase in the number of patients seen at SJRMC’s Emergency Department over the last few years, a goal was set to redesign ED processes using innovative best practices to create an ideal patient and family experience. The redesign saw significant results within the first 30 days of implementation, reducing the average wait time more than 50% from 28 minutes to 11 minutes. The current performance level is significantly below state and national averages, and is approaching national best practice performance.

Stroke Education

In 2010, nearly 200 patients came to SJRMC’s Emergency Department with stroke symptoms. The volume drove efforts to improve stroke care, which included receiving certification as a Primary Stroke Center and creating a committee dedicated to improving stroke outcomes. Opportunities for improvement identified by the committee included:

·         Revising the stroke checklist to enable staff to more easily identify the components required for effective patient care;

·         Early patient identification by the Stroke Coordinator;

·         Patient discharge education, including an easy way to recognize the signs of stroke with BE FAST.

Balance off

Eyes- vision changes

Face drooping

Arm weakness

Speech difficulty

Time to call 911
Results show 100% compliance over a seven month period on the number of patients receiving stroke education.

Sepsis Bundle Compliance
Sepsis is an illness that frequently results in long-term health concerns and a high mortality rate. To successfully combat sepsis and reduce the mortality rate, SJRMC implemented the recommendations of the Surviving Sepsis Campaign. This includes everything from early recognition of sepsis to initiating rapid care within three hours of recognition, and screening all inpatients during every nursing shift. As a result of multidisciplinary team efforts, the hospital is seeing year over year reductions in sepsis cases and is on the road to achieving national best practice results.

Outpatient Pain Management for Long Bone Fracture
Pain management in patients with long bone fractures is undertreated in emergency departments. To provide high quality care to patients, process improvements focused on treating the long bone fracture rapidly and delivering pain medication within 30 minutes of arrival. From 2014 to 2017, the time it took to provide pain management decreased more than 15 minutes. SJRMC’s performance in 2016 exceeded the state and national median times by 15 to ten minutes respectively.

SJRMC’s quality improvement projects will be presented at HealthInsight’s Annual Quality Conference on October 24 in Albuquerque.

San Juan Regional Medical Center is a non-profit, acute care hospital and Level III Trauma Center with 194 licensed beds. Our mission is to personalize healthcare and create enthusiasm and vitality in healing. As a sole community provider in San Juan County, we deliver a remarkable range of highly personalized and specialized healthcare services to the people of the entire Four Corners region. San Juan Regional Medical Center, a Certified Primary Stroke Center, is accredited by Det Norske Veritas. More information is available at sanjuanregional.com.