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Ensuring the safety of our patients is vital to Lee Memorial Health System’s
mission of providing life-changing and life-saving care to the
citizens of our region.
The Lee Memorial Health System Board of Directors recently established
patient safety as the overriding core value for our health
system, and the best way that we can provide safe patient care
is to follow evidence-based practice protocols. Many departments
throughout LMHS have stepped up to this challenge, striving to
find the best ways to deliver care and make the patient
experience at LMHS the best of the best.
The Intensive Care Units at all four acute care LMHS hospitals have focused
heavily on ensuring the best possible care for many of the most
challenged and challenging patients. A major initiative of our
ICUs has been to decrease infections, often very common in ICUs
due to the severity of patients’ illnesses and weakened immune
systems, by focusing on eliminating central line blood stream
infections and ventilator-associated pneumonia.
Research has shown that the best ways to eliminate CLBSI and VAP in ICUs is
to follow a specific set of protocols every day for every
patient to be able to remove the central line or take the
patient off a ventilator as soon as possible.
And it’s working! Check out these impressive numbers from our ICUs:
HealthPark Medical Center
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12 months with ZERO VAP in the Medical
ICU, or MICU
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18 months with ZERO CLBSIs in the Open
Heart ICU, or OHICU
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9 month ZERO VAP in the Surgical ICU, SICU
Gulf Coast Medical Center
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6.6 months with ZERO CLBSIs
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3.6 months with ZERO VAP
Cape Coral Hospital
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27 continuous months with ZERO VAP
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Now, 7 months with ZERO VAP
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7 months with ZERO CLBSIs
Lee Memorial Hospital
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4 months with ZERO VAP in the SICU
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5 months with ZERO CLBSIs in the SICU
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10 months with ZERO VAP in the MICU
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1 month with ZERO CLBSIs in the MICU
This is outstanding, especially when you
consider that for years in the health care industry, it was
believed that high percentages of infections in ICUs were simply
inevitable. Our ICUs are proving that school of thought wrong!
Peace,
Jim Nathan
President, Lee Memorial Health System
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