Tennessee Medical Center Uses AHRQ Tools to Reduce Infections, Medical errors The NorthCrest Medical Center, located in Springfield, Tennessee, used AHRQ’s CUSP (Comprehensive Unit based Safety Program) to decrease the number of pressure ulcers, and to tackle some other patient safety issues they were having ranging from cauti, which are known as catheter associated urinary tract infections, right down to errors in medication. NorthCrest has a certified wound center, before using CUSP they struggled for years with pressure ulcers, within three weeks they noticed improvement (AHRQ, 2017). Vice President and chief nursing officer, Angela Beard added that, CUSP has been successful, NorthCrest put together a team who focus just on CAUTI, in 2012 they had experienced ten CAUTI, they reduced that number quick, and they continued those works after CUSP procedures were introduced, they had only one case in 2016). Teamwork is very critical and important for success when utilizing CUSP. CUSP’s principles can be approximately applied to a variety of patient safety issues, with positive outcomes (McGinley, 2013). Teaching employees in the field of safety, identification of deficiencies and learning from them, and engagement of leadership, and implementing the necessary tools needed for teamwork, are elements NorthCrest found to be very valuable. Northcrest identified very early in their program the education of their staff on safety was going to be very crucial. The staff that does patient care are the portion of the staff that will identify defects and problems, so training in safety was highly important to define their goals, they also excuted root cause analysis on all things that might cause injury to the patient and learned from those things and how to avert future mistakes or deficiencies in care (AHRQ, 2017). Health Care organizations are coming together to enforce patient safety and finding numerous ways in which they can labor with each other more efficiently and effectively to guarantee that they provide safe and high -quality care, with minimal risk (ECRI Institute, 2014). The organization that I am currently employed has implemented several of these practices, they have a skin team who is very excellent, the number of in house pressure ulcers are slim to none. They also have several measures of safety measures to ensure the safety of our residents such as, bed and chair alarms, residents who are non-compliant cannot be alone in their room, continual education of staff, and the use of air mattresses for some, equipment safety measures, among many others which has helped reduced the risk of falls, and injury.
