| Summary: | Executive Director’s Choice Award: Tyrone Hospital is the quintessential community hospital: created by the community, for the community. Established with bequests from Tyrone, Pennsylvania, businessman Harvey Gray and his wife, Adda, as well as local donations, it has been serving Northern Blair County residents for 66 years. Now part of the Tyrone Regional Health Network, one of the hospital’s core values is “continued improvement and learning,” and no one demonstrates this commitment better than its staff, which recently rallied together to improve surgical safety for their patients.
Surgical site infections (SSIs) are a leading cause of morbidity and mortality among all U.S. hospital-acquired infections—and are also among the most preventable. When SSIs occur following arthroplastic (hip and knee) surgeries, the impact can be devastating for patients, including additional surgeries, antibiotics, and rehabilitation that place a heavier physical, emotional, and financial burden on patients and their caregivers.¹
In 2018, the infection rate for total hip arthroplasties at Tyrone was as high as 4.1%, above the national rate of 2.40% (according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention National Healthcare Safety Network data for 2010). So in a spirit of community, members of the OR, infection control, patient safety, housekeeping, and maintenance departments collaborated to address the problem. They posted the infection rate in the OR, held monthly discussions, and analyzed the causes of each SSI. They updated policies and procedures to reflect best practices. And they reached out to the Patient Safety Authority (PSA) for help identifying areas for improvement in their surgical suite. Then they got to work fixing issues with terminal cleaning, broken equipment, and instrument cleaning practices.
Because of a true community effort that involved a multidisciplinary team; full transparency; and buy-in from hospital leadership, physicians, and staff, in just one year Tyrone Hospital reduced SSIs for hip replacement surgery to 0%. For this extraordinary effort and success, the Surgical Infection Reduction Team at Tyrone Hospital is the winner of the PSA’s 2020 I AM Patient Safety (IAPS) Executive Director’s Choice Award. They were one of nine groups and individuals to receive awards for their inspiring and life-changing accomplishments in patient safety in the last year, highlighted in the following pages. Judges selected the winners from 156 nominations, received from 79 facilities throughout Pennsylvania.
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