- May 1, 2024
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A year ago, the leadership team at Florida Hospital Flagler was assembled for a tense meeting. The hospital had just received a notice that it had received a grade of C from The Leapfrog Group, a Washington, D.C., nonprofit that compares hospitals around the country based on quality measures.
“When we saw the C and understood that 38% of the hospitals received a C, we weren’t OK with that,” said Vice President and Chief Nursing Officer Ellie Lenkevich, who oversees the quality department. “It’s always a wakeup call when you’re not the best of the best. But we took it personally.”
Lenkevich and the leadership team analyzed the situation and asked each other, “What can we do? What are we missing?” she recalled.
To be fair, she said, Leapfrog is complicated. It used to measure 28 safe practices, and it’s constantly changing its standards. This year, there are only eight measurements, and many good hospitals have a C, she said. But that’s progress. Once hospitals start hitting the mark easily, Leapfrog raises the bar.
“From a consumer perspective, it’s absolutely the right thing to do,” she said. “It’s not acceptable for hospitals to sit on their laurels.”
Regina Walczak, who was hired one year ago as director of quality and clinical effectiveness, was instrumental in helping to break down the problem and find solutions, Lenkevich said.
One of the missing components at Florida Hospital Flagler, according to Leapfrog, was an intensivist program in the intensive care unit. Leapfrog says mortality rates are 40% lower in hospitals with ICUs managed exclusively by board-certified intensivists.
Florida Hospital Flagler’s response? Hire Dr. Miren Schinco to fill that need. The program launched in June, and Hospital CEO Ken Mattison touted it in his annual state of the hospital address on Oct. 2. Just a few weeks later, Leapfrog’s 2013 ratings were released.
Thanks in part to the addition of the intensivist program, Florida Hospital Flagler had improved from a C to an A.
“Safety and quality are fundamental to our mission,” Lenkevich said. “I think that to show the community that we are among the elite in hospitals is something to be proud of.”
BOX: More good news
The hospital also was recognized in October as one of 1,099 top performers on key quality measures by The Joint Commission, an independent, not-for-profit organization that analyzes more than 20,000 hospitals in the United States. The recognition puts Florida Hospital Flagler as being in the top 33% of all Joint Commission-accredited hospitals that submitted data this year to its survey.
The key categories of care that were applauded were for heart attacks, heart failure, pneumonia and surgical care.
Lenkevich said that to reach the top echelon, certain best-practcie measurements have to be achieved 100% of the time. But more important than any award, she said, is what it says about the quality of care.
“That’s what it means to us — that we’re doing the right thing for our patients,” she said.
