Achievement Awards Spotlight: Guthrie Robert Packer Hospital

July 21, 2023

HAP's annual Achievement Awards honor hospitals and health systems for their innovation, creativity, and commitment to patient care. The Achievement Awards showcase and share member hospitals’ and health systems’ successful programs and best practices.

This year, Guthrie Robert Packer Hospital received the In Safe Hands Award for its outstanding project focused on a whole hospital, team approach to reduce hospital-acquired infections.

Here’s what you need to know:

• Background:  During the pandemic, staffing challenges and increased patient acuity added another degree of challenges. Through its project, the hospital team sought to reduce catheter-associated urinary tract infections and central line-associated blood stream infection.
• Taking action:  Clinical leaders and staff collaborated to implement a hospital wide Daily Device Huddle. This huddle is designed to assess indications for the device, discuss plans for removal or use of alternative devices, and escalate any barriers that may arise.
• Results:  The project made a positive impact, helping to ensure the incidence of catheter-associated urinary tract infections and central line-associated blood stream infections trended in the right direction.
  • The daily device huddle reduced infection rates and decreased utilization of catheters and central lines.
• Big benefit:  Less utilization of these devices means there is less of an opportunity for a patient to develop an infection, the team noted in its entry.
• Quotable:  “The promptness of removal when medically appropriate ensures that the devices are being removed, rather than left in longer than necessary,” the team noted. “Another success of our efforts is the ability to replicate the process at other hospital entities within our healthcare system and see similar positive results.

“Indirect results include an increased culture of collaboration, increased autonomy, and an increased awareness of our shared antimicrobial stewardship responsibility,” the team noted.

Congratulations to Guthrie Robert Packer Hospital for its commitment to patient safety and its outstanding effort to reduce hospital-acquired infections.

Questions about the HAP Achievement Awards may be directed to HAP Member Services at (717) 561-5359.