Castleview earns status as leader in patient safety from Duke University-affiliated program

QUALITY RECOGNIZED
    Castleview Hospital announced a unique designation Tuesday: membership in an exclusive club of healthcare facilities recognized for commitment to quality and patient safety.
    Top corporate and local Castleview leaders, doctors and medical staff, elected officials, area business executives and local media were invited to attend a special announcement and celebration of the milestone.
    Castleview was named a Duke LifePoint Quality Affiliate, a designation earned by only eight other hospitals in the LifePoint Health system.
    LifePoint Health is a publicly-traded, for-profit company headquartered in Tennessee with facilities all over the country.
    Mark Holyoak, Castleview’s chief executive officer, credited his staff, volunteers and medical professionals with working together to achieve the distinction.
    “This is tireless commitment by many of you, all of you, in making quality an undisputed top priority here at the hospital,” he said, speaking before several dozen people under a tent set up on hospital grounds. “At our hospital, quality means that everyone—employees in all departments, physicians, patients, volunteers, and family members—has a voice and plays a vital role in creating the best possible patient experiences and results.
    “Quality is more than just a set of clinical criteria; it’s a culture.”
    Beginning in 2014, Castleview signed on to its parent company’s national quality program. The program is designed to put in place methods for reducing preventative patient harms.         These harms can include post-operative infections, hospital-acquire pneumonia, or mishaps such as falls and other injuries that may occur as a patient recovers from illness or medical procedures.
    “When we started, we found that some of our quality and some of our patient safety criteria was hit and miss,” Holyoak said. “Today, we proudly take the next step in our quality journey.”
Grant Barraclaugh, Castleview’s chief nursing officer, reported that since 2014, the hospital has managed to lower rates of preventative harms.
“In just three years, we saw a reduction in preventable harms decline 3.7 percent, which is a great thing,” he said.
    Hospital-acquired pneumonia, he said, was down 0.8 percent. Post-operative infections were down 0.4 percent. Falls with injury dropped from 1.5 percent to 0.2 percent. Patients’ perceptions of our their hospital experiences also changed.
    “In 2014, 68 percent of surveyed patients rated their hospital stay with a nine or a 10, 10 being the best possible. In 2017…73 percent of patients surveyed rated their hospital stay with a nine or a 10,” Barraclaugh said.
    “These results are worth celebrating. And these are only a few of many,” he added.
    LifePoint Health President David Dill was on hand for the announcement. He commended Holyoak and his leadership for achieving the Duke University affiliated distinction.
    “It takes a team to pull this together … It is a team effort to accomplish something like this. You are not only the ninth hospital out of 71 hospitals, but only the second hospital in the western group to achieve this designation,” Dill said.
Castleview is one of two hospitals in Utah owned by LifePoint; the other is Ashley Regional Medical Center in Vernal. LifePoint’s Western Region is made up of those and 21 other facilities in 11 other states, according to its website.
“The mission of this organization is making communities healthier. It’s not just running a great hospital. It’s not just taking care of patients when they come here in need of hospital care. It’s the obligation and role your team here plays in helping to keep your community healthier,” Dill said. “Our mission is to create a place where people choose to come for care. A place where employees want to work. And a place where physicians choose to practice.
“I am so proud of this Castleview team. You have made a difference in your community and today we celebrate that,” Dill added.
Dr. Rusty Holman, LifePoint’s chief medical officer, said his company’s quality program was created to address issues that required quicker responses than the healthcare industry is normally accustomed.
“In traditional medicine, it takes somewhere between 14 and 17 years for practices that are proven to work to enter into common medical practice. That is way too long. And our patients deserve things faster, more reliably and more consistently from all of us,” he said.
Holman reiterated something Holyoak also referred to in his announcement—that healthcare quality is often in the eye of the beholder.
“Everyone has a voice in what quality means,” he said. “We as a system, as a hospital, have the capacity to get better and better and better over time. There are proven ways to continue doing that and that’s why this whole program was conceived.”
Holman says he holds up Castleview and facilities that have achieved similar status when he travels To other hospitals.  
“When we travel around and people ask us how we do that, we tell stories of Castleview. Because you are setting the example and setting the pace and setting the standard not just for our other 70 locations, but also for other healthcare systems around the country,” he said.
Representing North Carolina’s Duke University was Dr. Karen Frush, chief patient safety officer for Duke University Health System and vice president of quality for LifePoint Health.
She reminded the audience that Duke doesn’t allow companies to use its name lightly.
“There’s a reason why there are only a few designated hospitals and that is because in order to become designated as a Duke LifePoint Quality Affiliate we look very, very carefully at what you’re doing here, how you’re doing it, what difference it’s making,” she said. “We’re very careful about designations. The national quality program team took this recommendation to the Duke LifePoint governing board, and the governing board voted unanimously.”
After a number of hospital leaders and dignitaries addressed the assembled audience, Castleview officials hosted a gathering inside the hospital, where employees and guests were treated to an assortment of food as well as gift bags for staff members, including lapel pins and lanyards featuring the hospital’s new designation.
“The journey is not over,” Holyoak said. “This is simply a milestone, a huge milestone. Our journey continues as we begin to write the next chapter in Castleview Hospital’s story.”