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HANYS announces 2020 Pinnacle Award Winners

Statewide healthcare association recognizes Maryhaven Center of Hope, Saratoga Hospital, SBH Health System and Northwell Health for outstanding initiatives enhancing quality and patient safety

Rensselaer, NY, Oct. 7, 2020 ­– The Healthcare Association of New York State is pleased to announce the winners of HANYS’ 2020 Pinnacle Award for Quality and Patient Safety.

“We are honored to recognize Maryhaven Center of Hope, Saratoga Hospital, SBH Health System and Northwell Health for their impressive achievements in improving care quality,” said HANYS President Bea Grause, RN, JD. “Their programs provide tested models that healthcare providers can adapt and implement to improve quality and patient safety.”

The Pinnacle Award for Quality and Patient Safety recognizes and encourages broad dissemination of successful quality improvement and innovative patient safety initiatives in four categories based on organization size and type. Award winners are members of HANYS’ Commitment to Excellence, a statewide program designed to recognize HANYS’ member commitment and ongoing efforts to improve quality and patient safety.

The 2020 winners are:

Maryhaven Center of Hope

The reduction of aggressive behaviors and injuries to staff via de-escalation training and debriefing

Maryhaven Center of Hope developed a training module that combined debriefing training for management along with de-escalation training for direct support professionals adapted from concepts of the NYS OPWDD-PROMOTE curriculum. The multi-faceted approach provided staff with tools necessary to provide quality services to support challenging behaviors, while maintaining the safety of staff and patients.

As a result, there was a 35% decrease in staff injuries, 23% decrease in the use of restrictive physical interventions and 31% decrease in workers compensation claims and premiums.

Our profile of Maryhaven Center of Hope’s program features an interview with Keith Frain, assistant vice president of program services education and residential.

Saratoga Hospital

Eliminating unnecessary treatment of Clostridioides difficile infection and associated patient harm through the adoption of innovative diagnostic testing and antibiotic usage reduction strategies

Saratoga Hospital focused on reducing unnecessary treatment of CDI and associated patient harm through the adoption of innovative diagnostic testing and antibiotic usage reduction strategies. Their work included re-education of appropriate acute care testing criteria, as well as changes to the organization-wide diagnostic testing algorithm and antibiotic usage reduction strategies.

Results show a 66% reduction in CDI cases requiring treatment, reduction in hospital-acquired infections and a 52% decrease in inpatient hospital Quinolone utilization from 2018 to 2019 resulting in a reduction of unnecessary antibiotic treatment, hospital days and cost savings of $1 million.

Our profile of Saratoga Hospital’s program features an interview with J. Robert Hayes, Jr., MD, chief of inpatient medicine and chair of the quality and patient safety committee.

SBH Health System

The new definition of ‘clean’ — Use of adenosine triphosphate bioluminescence surface testing to validate cleaning practices and aid in decreasing hospital-acquired infections

Reducing HAIs has been a priority for SBH Health System with institutional goals of decreasing HAIs to zero. SBH Health System focused on the introduction of adenosine triphosphate bioluminescence surface tests after terminal cleaning to ensure a safe environment for patients. The ATP method uses a cost-effective swabbing test with defined protocols first used in the food industry and provides rapid results and a fail-safe method to measure the efficiency of cleaning procedures.

As a result, there has been an overall 73% decrease in HAIs, with a decrease in catheter-associated urinary tract infections (87%), central line-associated bloodstream infections (75%), CDIs (81%) and ventilator-associated events (57%) from 2015 to 2019, and overall hospital cost savings of $1.4 million.

Our profile of SBH Health System’s program features interviews with Judith Berger, MD, FIDSA, medical director, infection control, and Daniel Lombardi, DO, MBA, FACOEP, senior vice president, chief academic and quality officer.

Northwell Health

Implementation of a centralized mortality review process across a large integrated healthcare organization

Mortality reviews assist in enhancing a culture of safety by raising awareness about the scale and burden of healthcare-related harm, stimulating transparency, inter-disciplinary collaboration, quality improvement and organizational learning. Northwell Health made a commitment to establish a uniform MR process consistent with their priority to eliminate all preventable mortality. Their mortality review project consisted of a centralized two-tier review with a uniform MR tool and central interactive database to ensure reporting consistency across 15 hospitals varying in size, teaching status and location. Results indicated a 38% decrease in potentially preventable deaths, a 21% decrease in adverse events and a 31.7% decrease in opioid-related events.

Our profile of Northwell Health’s program features an interview with Mark. P Jarrett, MD, MBA, senior vice president and chief quality officer, deputy chief medical officer, at Northwell Health and professor, medicine, at Donald and Barbara Zucker School of Medicine at Hofstra/Northwell.

HANYS’ awards webpage features profiles of each of this year’s award-winning programs. HANYS’ in-person awards presentation, originally scheduled to take place in June at HANYS’ Annual Membership Conference, was cancelled due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

About HANYS

The Healthcare Association of New York State is the only statewide hospital and continuing care association in New York, representing nonprofit and public hospitals, nursing homes, home care agencies and other healthcare organizations. HANYS is a nonprofit corporation whose mission is to advance the health of individuals and communities by providing leadership, representation and service to healthcare providers and systems across the entire continuum of care.