Quality and safety: Tracking outcomes to ensure the highest quality care

How well does UW Health deliver the basics of good care. This includes how well our doctors communicate with our patients and how easy it is to access our services.

How well does UW Health do in helping our patients avoid illness and stay healthy. This includes screenings for disease and health problems, immunizations and other services geared towards healthy living.

How well do we do in helping our patients recover when they are sick or injured. This includes treatment, follow-up care, patient experiences and how happy they are with the care they received.

Does UW Health help our patients with ongoing, chronic conditions take care of themselves, control their symptoms, avoid complications and manage their daily activities.

How well does UW Health care for people and their families with terminal illness. This includes palliative care/end-of-life care, pain management, spiritual care and support for caregivers.

Medication use in hospitals and health systems is highly complex and often involves many distinct steps. Each step in the medication use process introduces a potential for error or patient harm. UW Health has implemented the following system to reduce the opportunity for medication errors. We utilize state of the art technology including:

• Barcode Medication Administration (BCMA) across UW Health to confirm the correct patient is given the correct medication prior to administration.

• Automated dispensing cabinets (ADC) storage units on our inpatient units to securely store medication and track inventory.

• Central pharmacy utilizes robotics and carousels to ensure accurate and timely delivery of medications. We also utilize IV Workflow technology in our sterile processing (SPA) facility.

• “Smart” intravenous infusion pumps are used throughout our hospitals to prevent medication infusion errors. In addition, we employ interoperability to reduce manual programming errors.

Patient falls are among the most common injury reported in hospitals across the country. UW Health is committed to making patient stays safe for everyone by:

• Equipping all patient bed with exit alarms to alert nursing staff

• Educating our staff and patients and families on the importance of asking for assistance
  

The responsibility to keep our patient’s safe belongs to all our staff and physicians. UW Health’s workforce is given a Culture of Safety survey every two years. The survey is focused on psychological safety, teamwork, continuous improvement, and overall safety. Results of the survey are communicated organization wide and are used to make improvements where needed.

We are proud of the excellent nursing care we provide our patients and their families. We are always evaluating the number of nurses we have compared to the number of patients to ensure the best individual patient care.