Since elevating safety to its No. 1 priority, Springfield (Ill.) Memorial Hospital has launched several projects to protect its staff and patients.
The 500-bed medical center is part of Springfield-based Memorial Health, which operates five hospitals. In 2019, the system revised its values statement to have safety as its first goal, followed by integrity, quality and stewardship, the American Hospital Association said in an Oct. 16 news release.
This "Safety First" culture has manifested in these programs:
1. Great Catch Award: The hospital encourages its employees to report actual and near-miss events, and safety practices being followed, to its SENSOR tool (System for Event Notification to Support Organizational Reliability).
Leaders then compile these responses to find and address patterns of safety concerns, and the award is given to those who are "driving ongoing enhancements in patient care and operational efficiency," according to the AHA.
2. Equity Scorecard: To discover health inequities, Springfield Memorial uses a visual scorecard that displays clinical outcomes stratified by social determinants of health and demographics. With the help of community outreach and sophisticated data analyses, the scorecard is a tool designed to energize the system's equitable culture.
3. Safety Summits: Through collaborations with the local chief of police, sheriff and district attorney, Springfield Memorial hosts recurring Safety Summits to reinforce a zero-tolerance stance on violence, gather insights from clinicians and set procedures for unsafe situations.