The National Patient Safety Foundation has recognized the U.S. Naval Hospital Guam and Minneapolis-based Fairview Health Services with its 2016 Stand Up for Patient Safety Management Award.
The award is presented each year to organizational members of the NPSF Stand Up for Patient Safety program that have successfully implemented outstanding patient safety initiatives.
This year, the U.S. Naval Hospital Guam was recognized for a medication reconciliation program it implemented that improved medication reconciliation accuracy rates by 50 percentage points.
"Our team was determined to improve the medication reconciliation process in order to mitigate or prevent medication-related errors," said Lt. Cmdr. Ladonyia Graham of the Family Medicine Clinic at the U.S. Naval Hospital Guam. "Perhaps most important of all, the solutions we put in place have proven to help our team remain sustainable as well as effective."
Fairview Health Services was recognized for a biological specimen management program it launched across its six hospitals that resulted in a 70 percent decrease in the risk of specimen mismanagement.
"Our goal was to prevent a serious error related to specimen management," said Susan Noaker, PhD, project manager of Fairview's surgical services. "This work has increased the safety of the care we provide to nearly 17,000 Fairview patients who undergo procedures involving biological specimens at our hospitals each year."
The 2016 awards will be presented during the 18th Annual NPSF Patient Safety Congress in May.
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