Walla Walla General Hospital
Setting Staff Up for Success in Pneumonia Care
Walla Walla General Hospital is one of the top-performing hospitals in the country on the pneumonia process-of-care measures, or "core," measures. The core measures, developed by the Hospital Quality Alliance and reported to the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS), relate to the provision of recommended treatment in four clinical areas: heart attack, heart failure, pneumonia, and surgical care. Walla Walla ranks in the 99th percentile for the pneumonia care core measures, the 91st percentile for the heart failure core measures, and the 97th percentile for the surgical care core measures. The hospital also performs very well on the heart attack core measures, but treats too small a population to reliably tell how well it is doing, according to CMS guidelines. Those interviewed credit the hospital's high performance on the pneumonia care core measures to education and reinforcement, as well as improvements to care processes, reminders, and other supports created to give staff the tools they need to succeed.
Performance Improvement Strategies
- Order sets developed with feedback from a multidisciplinary team can standardize and improve pneumonia care.
- Empower frontline staff, particularly those involved in noncompliant cases, by looking to them for opportunities to improve care processes.
- Employing staff physicians, such as hospitalists and emergency department physicians, enables the quality improvement department to spend less time securing physician buy-in and more time improving patient care.
