Berini salutes staff for making progress on patient safety

Hershey Medical Center President Deborah Berini highlights progress on patient safety and top-quality performance in the care of COVID-19 patients in her February President’s Perspective emailed to medical center staff on Feb. 26:

Dear Colleagues:

“Does anyone have a safety moment they wish to share?” This is the way we start each of our leadership meetings here at Penn State Health Milton S. Hershey Medical Center. This practice is one that honors the commitment we make as an institution to zero harm. We take a moment to pause and reflect on what we are learning from safety events, the positive action that is happening in the environment and how practicing our safety behaviors is improving the care of our patients.

It was in one of these shared safety moments that I learned about two of our outstanding pediatric oncology nurses, Steve Nicolosi and Katie Hissick. They discovered a defect in the tubing used with our BD Alaris pumps. Because they took the time to file a Midas report, they were recognized by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration for their contribution to safety, not only here at Hershey Medical Center but around the world.

As you hear them talk about the situation and how they submitted the Midas report, it was evident that speaking up for safety is just part of what they do every day as excellent nurses committed to the safety of their patients. Commitment like this is why we have experienced a 60% drop in serious safety events during the last three years. I am also happy to share that we are outperforming  our organizational goal this year of lowering serious safety events.

I have received a number of letters from patients and their families praising the care they or their loved ones received at the medical center. These letters always have a common theme revolving around the safety, quality and confidence that they had in the care. One patient’s grateful family member wanted our care teams to remember that the care, compassion and small gestures of humanity do make a difference in ways that are larger than we may realize.

This letter happened to arrive the same day we received a report from Vizient, a health care performance improvement company, comparing our COVID-19 outcomes with those of academic medical centers across the country. Our outcomes and quality of care results mirrored what our patients have been sharing in their letters – exceptional outcomes. Our mortality rate was significantly lower than expected for our patient population and in line with the top 10% of academic medical centers. The number of days our patients stayed in the ICU and our average length of stay were better than the top decile.

These results are the product of teamwork built upon strong relationships across care teams, leveraging the tremendous expertise and strength we have as an organization and good old-fashioned hard work and grit.

We receive many accolades for the quality of care that we provide, but the patient who recently wrote to me, exclaiming, “Your Team Rocks,” said it best, and I couldn’t agree more. Thank you for everything you do to communicate, collaborate, problem-solve, keep our patients safe and consistently deliver the highest levels of quality care.

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