THE CHR HAUTE SENNE USES BENCHMARKING TO ENSURE QUALITY HEALTHCARE IN THE ICU
Overview
The Haute Senne regional hospital centre serves a population of 75,000. By 2020, the institution hopes to be recognised for having a quality management system that can contribute to excellent healthcare and patient safety.
The hospital has about 200 beds and an intensive care unit (ICU) with 12 beds. Dr Pascal Reper coordinates the ICU. With the help of Dr Ingrid Léonard, they both use the data to monitor the quality of the institution.
Solution
In 2017, the ICU began working with the Epimed Monitor ICU system after participating in the MICA (Monitoring Intensive Care Activities) pilot project. Before, Dr Reper worked on the analysis of epidemiological data using other data management systems, in particular a programme developed in-house.
The advancement enabled by the Epimed Monitor ICU system was that data retrieval was now easier for quick, accurate analysis and, especially, that it provided an opportunity for comparing consolidated data with that of other hospitals. According to Dr Reper and Dr Léonard, ‘‘For us, this is the most important part of the system, as it allows us to identify where we are and, on the other hand, to know any inconsistencies. This allows us to see whether these differences explain the results and, therefore, to improve ourselves.’’
The Epimed Monitor ICU is currently linked to the hospital’s administrative system and automatically stores the data. The clinical information that is not found in the hospital system is entered manually into the system.
Results
The experience in using the Epimed Monitor ICU system after 2 years is indeed satisfactory. According to Dr Reper, “the Epimed system is flexible and intuitive”. What is more important right now is to motivate the rest of the team to use the reports and benchmarking.
In January 2019, the ICU nursing team began to use the NAS (Nursing Activities Score) module of the Epimed Monitor ICU system. The data obtained with the NAS was part of the internal feedback given by Dr Reper. These data helped to estimate nursing workload. ‘‘It is extremely useful for nurses, provides interesting information, and shows that we are concerned about their problems.’’
Another important aspect noted by Dr Reper is the use of the Epimed system to monitor hospital infections. In his opinion, having accurate information on antibiotics and on the problem of related multi-drug resistant germs, plus the convenience of benchmarking, is a crucial point.
‘‘I know my VAP rate, the central line-related infection rate, and that of catheter-related urinary tract infections, but I cannot yet compare them with the data of other hospitals.
Unfortunately, we don’t have a benchmarking at that level in our country yet, and this is assuming growing proportions due to the impact of all the infections associated with care in health institutions, and not only in Belgium.’’
Testimonials
I’m extremely pleased with the Epimed Monitor ICU system and would not use any other system instead.
Dr. Léonard
For us, Epimed Monitor ICU is an extension of our patient’s medical report. It gives us the quality cycle: identify, analyse, make changes, analyse again and then ensure that the results are better.
Dr. Reper