Mercy Memorial Hospital is a Keystone Center Hospital

Since 2003, Mercy Memorial has demonstrated its commitment to patient quality and safety by voluntarily participating in Keystone Collaboratives sponsored by the Michigan Health and Hospital Association. In fact, Michigan hospitals were recognized as leaders among the nation’s hospitals to address hospital-associated infections and to significantly reduce those infection rates.

Through the participation in the Keystone ICU Collaborative, allowing for voluntary research, dialogue and benchmarking with hospitals across Michigan and the U.S., MMHS has achieved a milestone – Five Years without a Ventilator Associated Pneumonia in the Intensive Care Unit. This is a major achievement. Representatives from MHA Keystone are planning to visit MMHS to congratulate the ICU staff, respiratory therapy staff, pharmacy, the medical staff and several other areas for this outstanding accomplishment in patient quality and safety.

Since 2004, the Michigan hospitals participating in this Keystone Initiative have saved more than 1,830 lives, saved more the $300 million in health care costs and reduced hospital stays by more than 140,700 days.

Staff members at MMHS have made significant strides in patient safety through participation in the Keystone Collaboratives. Staff from all nursing units and departments within the organization have contributed to improving patient quality and safety at MMHS. Other MHA Keystone Collaboratives at MMHS include:

• Gift of Life – improving the referral rate by increasing the actual number of donors, improving the efficiency of the organ donation process, increasing the actual number organ donors that result in donation and increasing the number of organs transplanted per donor
• Surgery – eliminating surgical site infections, reduce complications related to surgery , eliminate the mislabeling of specimens, prevent missteps in care in terms of surgical site and improved teamwork and safety practices among staff
• Obstetrics – preventing birth injuries, following best practices and timely interventions for elective induction of labor and elective cesarean births before 39 weeks, coordinating appropriate responses to fetal distress and coordinating a safe progression of labor
• Emergency Department – improve the overall culture of safety in the department, improve the process of patient flow, boarding and wait times and early identification and treatment of sepsis
• Hospital-Associated Infection – implement prevention strategies starting with a manageable list of targeted infections, focus on hand-hygiene techniques, reducing catheter-associated urinary tract infections and avoiding central line-associated bloodstream infections.

Mercy Memorial Hospital’s Emergency Department was recognized in December 2010 at an MHA Keystone conference for exceeding all targets in its category. This achievement was following MMHS’ scores placing it in the top 10 percent in the nation for five of its quality measures and within one and two percent of the top 10 for the remaining 11 quality measures and HomeCare Connection exceeding the state and national average of 13 of 22 available quality measures.