Award Winning Hospital Standardizes Care and Enhances Patient Outcomes through Innovative Physician Alignment Program
Client Profile
For nearly 90 years, Dignity Health Glendale Memorial Hospital and Health Center has served the medical needs of the greater Glendale-Burbank area. Glendale Memorial is a 334-licensed bed full service acute care hospital with 1,000 employees. The hospital is the recipient for the second year in a row of the Healthgrades Patient Safety Excellent AwardTM and is ranked among the top 10% of all hospitals in the nation for patient safety.
Situation
Glendale Memorial Hospital and Health Center wanted to improve patient outcomes through quality improvement efforts. The hospital had 19 individual providers with a variety of practice patterns representing 1/3 of the entire case volume. These varied practice patterns caused significant utilization issues. Glendale hoped to integrate these independent primary care providers into the general medicine service line, standardize protocols and significantly enhance clinical outcomes.
Solution
The Dynafios Team worked with Glendale and the physicians to increase physician engagement, implement standardized clinical approaches and develop best practices. Four populations were identified as key based on volumes, which included COPD, heart failure, Pneumonia and Sepsis. In addition, Glendale wanted to develop protocols to lower the readmission rate for heart failure and pneumonia, and reduce the sepsis mortality rate.
Results
Dynafios identified a set of key indicators from which to measure including standardizing antibiotic and blood culture orders, and standardizing evidence-based protocols and care. The independent providers and Glendale were monitored monthly to identify ongoing progress.
At the end of the first year, key achievements included:
- Reducing readmissions by 35% for heart failure and pneumonia
- Cutting Sepsis mortality rate by 49%
- Slashing the average length of stay (ALOS) resulting in savings of $984,000 (over 732 days across 1,273 cases)
By implementing the Dynafios Co-Management process, this award-winning healthcare organization reduced costs, improved compliance with standard order sets and performance on key quality and utilizations indicators, reduced complications, length of stay and respiratory acidosis.
The Dynafios bottom line:
- Increased compliance with standard antibiotic orders by 26%
- Decreased savings based on average LOS reductions by $984K
- Reduced Sepsis mortality by 49%
- Improved compliance with standard blood culture orders by 21%
- Achieved a 732 days total reduction across 1,273 cases
- Decreased readmissions by 35%
