Carlsbad Medical Center Wins Hospital Innovation Improvement (HIIN) Award

11/12/2018

Carlsbad Medical Center has earned the Hospital Innovation Improvement (HIIN) Award for two years of performance improvement evidenced by measurements of quality and patient safety. The awards were presented in a recent ceremony at the 73rd Annual Meeting of the New Mexico Hospital Association (NMHA) in Albuquerque.

“We are blessed to have engaged hospital leadership and committed front-line staff focused on providing safe quality care and excellent service to every patient, all the time,” said Sam Jones, Carlsbad Medical Center Chief Nursing Officer, who accepted the award from Andrew Shin, Chief Operating Officer of the American Hospital Association Center for Health Innovation and Jeff Bourgeois, Chair of the NMHA Quality Committee.

CMC is one of fifteen New Mexico hospitals recognized for excellence during the 2016-2018 phase of HIIN, the extensive, multi-year program that aims to ensure better care for individuals and populations throughout the state. Supported by the federal Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS), and administered by NMHA working with the Health Research and Educational Trust (HRET) of the American Hospital Association (AHA); overall goals of the program are to achieve a 20% decrease in overall patient harm and a 12% reduction in readmissions from 2014 baseline numbers, by 2019.

CMC beat goal measures in some important ways. Year over year Carlsbad Medical Center was able to reduce patient falls by nearly 40% and improve the anticoagulation of patients by nearly 53%. These two measures alone would equate to at least 27 instances of prevented harm and nearly $300,000 saved in associated costs.

Carlsbad Medical Center has also signed onto the Equity of Care Pledge to eliminate healthcare disparities. Endorsed by NMHA’s Board of Directors as a step in addressing differential access and outcomes that can affect New Mexicans based on race, ethnicity, culture and other social factors, the pledge is a commitment from the CMC team to collect and use data on these factors, work with community partners and train in diversity and cultural competency.

Commitment to quality and patient safety is central to the mission of NMHA member hospitals. Programs like HIIN engage hospital leadership and clinicians at all levels to build on successes and spread best practices in education and staff training, mentorship, monitoring, data collection and analysis and governance across the state. At Carlsbad Medical Center, staff including played a critical role in implementing and sustaining important quality measures.

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