Arrowhead Regional Medical Center will be recognized with a 2014 Quality Leader Award from the California Association of Public Hospitals and Health Systems (CAPH) on Dec. 4, at the association’s annual conference in San Diego. The CAPH Quality Leaders Awards recognize and showcase system improvements achieved by California’s public health care systems. ARMC earned an award for its entry, “Hospital Acquired Pressure Ulcer (HAPU) – Adventures in Prevention.”
“It is an honor to receive this award,” said ARMC Chief Nursing Officer, Michelle Sayre. “Our HAPU prevention program has helped us reduce our HAPU rate from 5.2 percent in 2011 to 1.6 percent in 2014.”
Without aggressive prevention, HAPU, more commonly known as bedsores, can occur easily in a hospital environment and lead to suffering, infection, and a host of other problems.
ARMC’s HAPU prevention program draws experts from multiple disciplines including nursing, medical staff, physical therapy, nutrition services, respiratory therapy and education. The “HAPU – Adventures in Prevention” project included the development of an educational video to help train staff and to demonstrate best practices. The video uses a game scenario showing HAPU prevention protocols as a patient is taken through the system. To view the video go to: https://vimeo.com/102573519.
For more than 20 years, the CAPH Quality Leaders Awards program has acknowledged hundreds of quality improvements among its members. The goals of the program are to encourage the sharing of effective strategies and best practices that address pressing clinical and operational issues and advance community health; recognize dedicated and talented professionals in public health care systems; and showcase the unique and creative approaches that California’s public health care systems have taken to carry out their missions and address the health care needs of the communities they serve.
CAPH represents 21 public health care systems and academic medical centers. CAPH members comprise the core group of health care providers that make up the state’s medical safety net, and provide essential community services such as emergency, trauma and burn care. For more information about CAPH go to: http://caph.org/aboutcaph/.
ARMC, a university affiliated teaching hospital, is a state-of-the-art acute care facility with a full range of inpatient and outpatient services including a Level II trauma center, mobile medical clinic, primary stroke center, and a regional burn center. For more information about ARMC, go to: www.arrowheadmedcenter.org.