At Clay County Medical Center, our quality team consists of every employee dedicated to ensuring our patients and their family receive the highest care possible. Our goals are quality improvement and patient safety. If you have any questions or concerns, please let us know.
How do we measure quality?
At CCMC, we work with state and national level programs to ensure we are providing the most effective and efficient care. There are many different ways to measure quality, and our data comes from information obtained through patient care - in addition to information directly from our patients about their experience at our hospital. This data shows us how current systems and processes are working, information to track any changes, areas to focus on, and helps us deliver better outcomes.
Why Quality Improvement is important
Focusing on quality improvement helps our hospital promote patient safety, allows us to focus on continuous patient-centered improvement, which most importantly helps improve patient outcomes.
Quality Initiatives
Clay County Medical Center has many different quality initiatives dedicated to improving patient care, patient safety and clinical outcomes. Here are a few examples:
- Improved Patient Outcomes
- Bedside Rounding: At the beginning of each shift, patients and families are engaged and encouraged to actively participate in their plan of care, ask questions, and voice concerns for follow-up – while the nursing staff hand-off patient care roles with each other and discuss important patient information at the bedside.
- Fall Prevention Program: This nursing initiative occurs at the beginning of each nursing shift/patient handoff. Patients and families are engaged and encouraged to actively participate in their plan of care, ask questions, and voice concerns for follow-up – while the nursing staff update each other on and discuss important patient information at the bedside.
- Benefits of Bedside Rounding/Fall Prevention:
- Provides the opportunity to improve patient specific communication between nurses.
- Promotes and increases patient safety.
- Allows time for patients and families to ask questions, focus on goals and any areas of concern.
- Increases accountability, teamwork and relationships among nursing staff.
- Provides continuity of care from the nursing team through this structured time of transitioning patient care.
- Develops relationships between patients and nursing staff by encouraging patients and families to be actively involved in their care.
- After patients have an inpatient stay or a visit to our emergency department, they might receive a survey through Press Ganey.
- These mailed surveys are confidential and sent to a sampling of patients, and help our hospital have a better understanding of how we can help improve our patient’s experience during their stay or visit.
- Communication with providers and nurses
- Information about discharge home
- Understanding of medications
- Pain management
- Responsiveness of staff
- Hospital Environment
- Overall hospital rating, and likelihood of recommending the hospital to others
- Staff members should was their hands, or use hand sanitizer, before and after caring for each patient.
- Patients, families and visitors should also be encouraged to practice good hand hygiene.
- At CCMC, some staff members are trained to watch how well medical staff keep their hands clean. They observe providers, nurses and other health care workers to see if they wash their hands or use hand foam before entering or leaving a patient’s room.
- Information from observations are shared with hospital and leadership staff, as well as with other hospitals in the state and nation-wide.
Patient Satisfaction
CCMC welcomes feedback from our patients and families about their care experience at our hospital. One way that we are able to receive feedback is through patient surveys.
Patient Experience
The questions on the patient surveys following a stay or visit to our hospital measure different areas of the patient experience. A few examples are:
Making Surveys Meaningful
We value the feedback and information that we receive from our patients and their families through patient surveys. The results from the surveys are closely monitored, so that we can continue to improve the quality of care given to our patients at CCMC.
Our facility recently received a 4 star overall hospital rating, and a 5 star rating from our patient surveys on the Hospital Compare website!
>> Click to visit Medicare.gov | Hospital Compare
Thank you for helping our hospital stay committed to improving our patient experience, by providing us with important feedback from our patients and families.
What does CCMC do to prevent infections?
The single most important tool in preventing the spread of germs and health care-associated infections between patients, is good hand hygiene.
How does CCMC perform?
Our goal at CCMC is to reach 100% hand hygiene compliance for all health care workers. We continue to monitor staff and encourage patients/families/visitors to wash their hands or use sanitizing foam. We also educate staff that do not have direct patient contact, but still have an important role in infection prevention through using good hand hygiene.
Keeping Staff Accountable
There are signs posted throughout CCMC as a reminder for staff of the importance of hand hygiene. All staff are encouraged to speak up to other employees who may forget to wash their hands.
Help Us Support Safety
You can help us prevent the spread of germs and infections by helping ensure good hand hygiene while receiving care at our hospital! Patients and families are also encouraged to speak up, and feel free to ask health care providers if they washed their hands prior to entering the patient’s room.
Patients, family members and visitors should wash their own hands often while at CCMC, especially after using the restroom and after touching any surfaces in the hospital room. Visitors should also follow any additional infection control measures, such as wearing isolation gowns/masks while visiting patients – that may be put into place by the health care team.
Please ask a member of the healthcare team if you have any concerns regarding hand hygiene, or for more information about infection prevention at our facility.