Improving the quality of pressure ulcer management in a skilled nursing facility.
Pressure ulcers (PUs) are a serious health care problem for nursing home residents and a key quality metric for regulators. Three initiatives were introduced at a 128-bed facility to improve PU prevention. First, a Quality Assurance and Performance Improvement project and a Root Cause Analysis were conducted to improve the facility's wound care programme. Second, a digital wound care management solution was adopted to track wound management. Third, the role of skin integrity coordinator was created as a central point of accountability for wound care-related activities and related performance metrics. Improvements in PU prevention were tracked using Centers of Medicare and Medicaid data, specifically (a) the percentage of long-stay high-risk residents with PUs and (b) the percentage of short-stay residents with PUs that are new or have worsened. PU prevalence for long-stay high-risk residents was 12.99% (Q4 2016), and upon implementation of these initiatives, the facility saw continued reductions in PU prevalence to 2.9% (Q4 2017), while PUs for short-stay residents were maintained at zero throughout this period. This study highlights the power of effective management combined with real-time data analytics, as enabled by digital wound care management, to make significant improvements in health care delivery.
['Au|Yunghan|Y|https://orcid.org/0000-0002-8976-0350', 'Holbrook|Mary|M|', 'Skeens|Adam|A|', 'Painter|Jessica|J|', 'McBurney|James|J|', 'Cassata|Amy|A|', 'Wang|Sheila C|SC|https://orcid.org/0000-0001-8123-1713']
D006801:Humans D009735:Nursing Homes D017410:Practice Guidelines as Topic D003668:Pressure Ulcer D011787:Quality of Health Care D012866:Skilled Nursing Facilities D017592:Skin Care D014903:West Virginia
nursing home pressure injuries quality improvement risk management smartphone