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BHS recognized for
quality and safety
The Leapfrog Group
The Leapfrog Group (
www.leapfroggroup.org
) is a
national organization using the collective lever-
age of large purchasers of health care to initiate
breakthrough improvements
in the safety, quality,
and affordability of
health care for Americans. The flagship Leapfrog Hospital
Survey allows purchasers to structure their contracts and
purchasing to reward the highest-performing hospitals.
The Leapfrog Group was founded in November 2000
with support from the Business Roundtable and national
funders, and is now independently operated with support
from its purchaser and other members.
BHS will
rise
to the
challenge
Health care reform. Reimburse-
ment cuts. Health information
exchanges. Accountable care
organizations. Risk-based con-
tracting. Ugh!
It’s enough to make your head spin, but these are
important topics when managing a health care organi-
zation. All are outcomes of the Patient Protection and
Affordable Care Act—known in the popular press as
Obamacare. Given that the cost of U.S. health care is
unaffordable and unsustainable, and that hospitals are
the most expensive component of U.S. health care, it is
a certainty that significant challenges lie ahead for BHS
and every other hospital system.
Health care has entered a formidable period of change
not unlike that experienced by other industries—steel,
automobile, banking, air travel and so on. Some will rise
to the challenge and succeed—others will struggle.
But what really matters is you. The care that we pro-
vide to you and your loved ones is why we exist. We
are a not-for-profit organization with a charitable mis-
sion that we take very seriously. Our team of doctors,
nurses, technicians and many others seek to serve you
to the very best of their abilities, every day. Some proof
of our success is in publicly available data, as you can
read about in our cover story. But other, very important
proof is what you say.
I often receive letters from our patients and their fami-
lies about the great experience they had at BHS. I recently
read one from a lovely woman from Mercer County
who ended up at Butler Memorial Hospital for bowel
surgery and cardiac care. She raved not only about ex-
cellent outcomes and recovery, but about our doctors
and staff. This is the common thread of your praise: our
people. We can teach people how to perform a proce-
dure or complete a task, but each individual must have it
in himself or herself to care. And our people do.
BHS will be one of the organizations to thrive in the
new era of U.S. health care. We are determined and
optimistic, and we will succeed. Not because a bu-
reaucrat tells us that we have to. Because we must—
and we want to—for you.
Ken DeFurio
President and CEO
FROM THE PRESIDENT AND CEO
Ken DeFurio,
President and CEO
uses 26 measures of publicly available hospital safety
data to produce a single score representing a hospital’s
overall capacity to keep patients safe from infections,
injuries, and medical and medication errors. U.S. hos-
pitals were assigned an A, B, C, D or F.
“This recognition is the result of a multi-year, disci-
plined focus on quality and safety,” says DeFurio. “We
are committed to offering a broad array of services
to the region at the highest level of quality. Safety is
clearly a priority for our 2,000 physicians, employees
and volunteers.”
“It’s the Leapfrog Group’s goal to give patients the in-
formation they need and deserve before even entering
a hospital,” says Leah Binder, President and CEO of the
Leapfrog Group. “We congratulate the hospitals that
earned an ‘A,’ and we look forward to the day when
all hospitals in the U.S. will earn the highest scores for
putting patient safety first.”
To see BMH’s scores as they compare nationally and
locally, visit
www.hospitalsafetyscore.org
. The site also
provides information on how the public can protect
themselves and their loved ones during a hospital stay.
Patients are our priority
For nearly a decade,
BHS has been participating in Highmark’s Quality Blue
initiative—a program designed to promote safer and
standardized hospital practices. Each year, based on
outcomes, Highmark determines quality initiatives for
participating hospitals. In addition, select hospitals are
chosen for pilot programs that might develop into ini-
tiatives for other hospitals. BMH been recognized as
a leader and has participated in the pilot program for
three years, helping Highmark develop future projects
for other hospitals.
BMH has a long-standing track record of imple-
menting measures that improve the quality and safety
—Continued from front page
of care for our patients. From nationwide initiatives to re-
duce urinary tract and central line infections to measures
concerning surgical safety and treatment for patients with
diabetes, BMH has worked to meet and exceed the es-
tablished goals—in fact, BHS has continued
to excel in health care quality and
safety, meeting at least 90 per-
cent of each of the established
goals. This year’s initiatives fo-
cused on:
»»
Streamlining emergency room
procedures for more efficient
patient flow
»»
Reducing infections resulting
from surgery
»»
Improving protocols to reduce
blood clots
»»
Educating the public about diabetes
and diabetes-related complications
»»
Education concerning sepsis, a seri-
ous complication, especially with el-
derly populations
»»
Educating the public about heart fail-
ure and complications related to heart
failure
»»
BHS also achieved a deficiency-free
survey for 2011 from the Pennsylvania
Department of Health
“The real story is in how teams made
improvements [to their processes] over
the course of the year,” says Diane Wilson,
Systems Improvement Manager for Butler
Health System. “These improvements have
improved the quality and safety of care for
our patients.”
In October, BHS was recognized once again
by the Department of Health as one of only six
Pennsylvania hospitals to have a deficiency-free
survey for 2011. Executive Deputy Secretary of
Health Michael Wolf visited the BHS main cam-
pus and discussed Butler Health System’s longtime
commitment to quality in patient care.
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