Heritage Valley Sewickley was one of 91 participating hospitals in Pennsylvania,
New York and West Virginia in the Quality Blue Program. Heritage Valley was recognized
for their outstanding quality improvement efforts and demonstrating better patient
outcomes, at the Quality Blue Best Practices Forum, presented by Highmark on November
8, 2013 in Pittsburgh, PA.
A venous thrombosis is a blood
clot (thrombus) that forms within a vein. A classical venous thrombosis is deep
vein thrombosis (DVT), which can break off (embolize), and become a life-threatening pulmonary embolism
(PE).
The award was presented for maintaining rates better than the
aggregate rates for VTE prophylaxis compliance, providing warfarin discharge instructions
to patients, and VTE events during hospitalization or within 30 days of discharge.
Heritage Valley Sewickley was recognized for demonstrating the highest percentage
compliance for VTE prophylaxis (prevention of VTE) over the program year combined
with the lowest rate for lower extremity VTE events. While data that helped
garner the award was collected from July 2012 to June 2013, interdepartmental teams
have been meeting and developing new processes for many years.
“Our
success is multi-factorial, including the development of a physician consensus statement
regarding VTE prophylaxis, involvement of direct and indirect patient care staff,
use of automated prompts in the electronic medical record and enhanced operational
processes,” said John Luellen, M.D., Chief Quality Officer for Heritage Valley
Health System.
“We really engaged staff in the process of using
the electronic record to their advantage and educating care providers, as well as
patients, about the importance of VTE prevention,” said Linda Homyk, Chief
Nursing Officer at Heritage Valley Sewickley. “The team members working
on this project were: Project Leader, Mark Harmanos, PharmD; Physician Champions,
Alfred Doyle, MD and Richard Hogan, MD; Director of Utilization, JoAnn Hatton; Director
of Pharmacy, Bridget Walker; and