Hospital inpatient—hospital type

Community-based physicians send an electronic handoff note with pertinent information to Northwestern Memorial Hospital's emergency department personnel when referring patients for emergency care, leading to improvements in physician efficiency and satisfaction, care coordination, and the quality and timeliness of care.

Teen Health Center providers use standardized processes and tools to enhance the provision of recommended care to teens with asthma.

A hospital emergency department triages moderately acute patients to a “midtrack” area where a nurse practitioner further evaluates them and provides treatment under a physician's supervision, leading to lower length of stay and fewer patient walkouts.

A fall prevention toolkit uses a computerized algorithm to assess the risk of falling, identify patient-specific risk factors, and design individualized interventions to reduce those risks, leading to fewer falls in the inpatient setting.

A dedicated team of nurses and clerks provides followup support for patients discharged from the emergency department, leading to better quality care, high satisfaction among patients and primary care providers, and fewer patient walkouts.

A trained educator used “academic detailing” sessions to teach primary care clinicians about proven strategies for reducing the pain and anxiety associated with childhood immunizations, leading to increased use of these strategies and greater satisfaction among clinicians.

Culturally competent community liaisons help members of the Orthodox Jewish, Arab, and Chinese communities access health care and community-based services, leading to a better patient experience.

A partnership between a health plan and psychiatric hospitals focuses on sharing of quarterly data, case reviews, and deployment of specific strategies to improve postdischarge care, leading to significant reductions in readmissions, inpatient days, and costs.

A telepharmacy program enables offsite pharmacists to review and approve medication orders in 14 hospitals, leading to expanded hours of service, reduced order processing times, enhanced pharmacy services, higher nurse satisfaction, freed up pharmacist time, and more than $1 million in annual cost savings.

A multifaceted strategy that includes ongoing auditing of adherence to established protocols and daily performance feedback to staff improved hand hygiene in a busy, urban emergency department.