Calvert Memorial Hospital receives accreditation
Calvert Memorial has achieved accreditation from the Joint Commission on Accreditation of Healthcare Organizations (JCAHO). This approval comes after a four-day survey in August that looked at how well the hospital documents care, prevents infections and ensures patient safety. The independent exam also evaluated the quality of care provided.

"The survey team described CMH as a quality and safety data-driven organization," said Maggie Eller, RN, director of performance improvement. "They complimented our efforts to improve medication safety ... particularly how we use information technology to prevent errors."

"It's important to us to pursue practices that detect potential problems and solve them early," she added. "Quality and patient safety is the focus of our entire organization."

The commission, founded in 1951, annually inspects some 18,000 healthcare facilities to determine if they meet national benchmarks. The goal of the survey process is to improve the safety and quality of the nation's health care. Accreditation standards of the Joint Commission actually exceed federal standards.

"We are extremely pleased to have received this recognition," said CMH President and CEO Jim Xinis. "The staff were confident and that reflected in their outstanding performance." He also thanked the physicians, volunteers and the community for their participation in the survey.

Xinis added, "Efforts to improve don't stop when the survey is over. Achieving excellence is a continuous process. No matter how well we did today, we can continue to strive to do better tomorrow."

Every three years, Calvert Memorial voluntarily undergoes a survey by a team of Joint Commission experts.   The team interviewed staff and patients; reviewed documents, examined the facility and observed how various departments delivered care.

Eller described the recent survey as "the most challenging and detail -oriented we ever had." She said JCAHO has changed the way it evaluates hospitals. In the past, there were scheduled tours and group discussions. This year, the surveyors examined CMH through the "eyes of a patient," which meant they traced the paths of patients through the hospital in order to better evaluate what a true CMH patient experience is like.

These changes are an example of the increased emphasis on patient safety. In 1999, medication errors became front-page news with the release of a compelling report by the Institute of Medicine. The IOM report found that errors involving prescription medications kill up to 7,000 Americans a year. The national spotlight triggered closer scrutiny of how errors occur, what causes them and how they can be avoided.

Locally, CMH has made fundamental changes in the way medications are ordered, stored, dispensed and administered. It has also increased its pharmacy staff. To an increasing degree, the hospital is focusing on computerized systems that prevent errors, especially those created by handwriting errors. In fact, in 2004, the Maryland Hospital Association Medsafe Project ranked CMH sixth in overall medication safety out of 47 participating hospitals across the state.

As a result of the survey, JCAHO made five recommendations for improvement to the hospital and two for its behavioral health unit. "Mainly, they involved documentation issues," Eller explained, "such as changes to our forms. Several were done the same day they were identified. We modified our on-line medication record."