North Valley Hospital Receives Quality Award
North Valley Hospital was recently honored with the Montana Rural Healthcare Performance Improvement Network’s Quality Improvement Award for its work on Medication Reconciliation.
The Montana Rural Healthcare Performance Improvement Network (PIN) is a voluntary membership of 47 critical access hospitals throughout the state. Through this Network, member hospitals are able to benchmark their performance with their peers on a variety of financial, utilization and direct patient care measures that encourage safe, effective, patient-centered care delivery in even the most remote communities of the state. PIN quality of care measures are based on national benchmarks, but are tailored to reflect the realities of the state’s rural population.
“Medication Reconciliation is one critical step toward increasing patient safety in the healthcare continuum and will positively affect patients’ understanding of their own medication regime,” said North Valley Hospital Acute Care Manager Martha Stadler, RN.
Throughout 2009, three PIN member facilities worked to develop a medication reconciliation process, which has been shown to improve the safety of medical care provided to hospitalized patients by reducing the number of opportunities for medication errors. To receive an award, the facility must have implemented a sustainable system for collecting information about current medications on admission, verifying the name, dose and administration of each one, and reconciling that list with medication orders at the patient’s discharge.
North Valley Hospital has demonstrated a commitment to its community and the region it serves through its efforts to implement an effective and sustainable process for medication reconciliation. Stadler received the award for the facility at the Performance Improvement Network’s regional meeting held in Ronan on October 22 nd, 2009.
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