Danbury (Conn.) Surgical Center won the AAAHC's Bernard A. Kershner Innovations in Quality Improvement Award, which recognizes organizations for improvement in quality of care, patient safety and overall efficiency.
Here are five things to know.
1. Primary care and surgical/procedural organizations submitted descriptions of their quality improvement studies and results. Panelists selected three finalists in each of the two categories.
2. Danbury (Conn.) Surgical Center won the surgical/procedural care category for studying the cost efficiency of replacing Miochol-E with Miostat during routine ophthalmologic surgery and its impact on quality of care.
After the study found no significant correlation between Miostat and postoperative nausea and vomiting — and estimated annual savings of $24,415 using the treatment — the center's ophthalmologists switched to exclusively using Miostat. The ASC surpassed expectations with $27,175 in savings.
3. Finalist Fort Worth (Texas) Endoscopy Center was named the People's Choice Surgical/Procedural Care Winner by attendees at a recent AAAHC Achieving Accreditation meeting. The surgery center began using carbon dioxide instead of air for bowel insufflation, resulting in a 57 percent reduction in pain-related complications and adverse events from 2013 to 2016. Transfer rates decreased 26 percent.
4. Ophthalmology Surgery Center of Dallas, which submitted its study on reducing immediate use steam sterilization, was also a surgical/procedural care finalist.
5. Winslow (Ariz.) Indian Health Care Center won the primary care category for implementing a transition of care and medication reconciliation program that decreased readmission rates from 33 percent to 10 percent in two years.