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Ridgewood NJ, the Valley Hospital is proud to have been recognized with an “A” grade for patient safety for the 21st time with the release of The Leapfrog Group‘s Fall 2023 Hospital Safety Grade. This national distinction celebrates Valley’s achievements in protecting hospital patients from preventable harm and errors.
Continue reading The Leapfrog Group: The Valley Hospital Earns an ‘A’ Hospital Safety Grade
March 8th 2016
Ridgewood NJ, The Valley Hospital in Ridgewood, NJ, and Holy Name Medical Center in Teaneck, NJ, are collaborating to defeat a common foe: a dangerous drug-resistant bacterium called Clostridium difficile, or C. difficile.
The two hospitals recently announced the formation of the Valley-Holy Name Joint Healthcare-Acquired Infections/Antibiotic Resistance Collaborative.
C. difficile is a bacterium that can cause symptoms ranging from diarrhea to life-threatening inflammation of the colon. It was responsible for almost half a million infections and was associated with approximately 29,000 deaths in 2011, according to a study released last year by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).
“C. difficile is public enemy No. 1 and it is clear that defeating it will take a cooperative, multi-institutional and multidisciplinary approach, since the infection can be picked up at any point in a patient’s care and can be transmitted from institution to institution, “said Neil Gaffin, M.D., an infectious disease specialist at The Valley Hospital, “No one is going to get anywhere without working together.”
The CDC study found that 65.8 percent of the cases of C. difficile were health care–associated, but only 24.2 percent had onset during hospitalization. The rest originated in a nursing home or were associated with having received outpatient care at a health care facility. The CDC has called upon health care facilities to work together to fight C. difficile, noting that because these infections can be spread inside of and between health care facilities when patients are transferred from one facility to another, a lack of coordination can put patients at risk.
Healthcare organizations are working very hard to meet the challenge of this organism, which is resistant to antibiotics causing overgrowth in the intestine in patients who are receiving antibiotic and produces a spore which persists in the environment, unaffected by soap and water as well as alcohol-based sanitizers. In addition, this organism produces a toxin which causes disease.
“We are employing bleach–based disinfectants, which are the only compounds that will inactivate the spores, and are restricting the use, spectrum and duration of antibiotic therapy to preserve the normal organisms in a patient,” said Thomas Birch, M.D., an infectious disease specialist at Holy Name Medical Center.
Valley has also instituted an aggressive campaign to reduce the unnecessary use of antibiotics and a comprehensive environmental disinfection program.
The Valley Hospital and Holy Name Medical Center are following the CDC’s recommendation and taking a collaborative approach to the problem. Representative of both hospitals are meeting regularly to share best practices — including restricting the use of antibiotics, infection control practices and procedures, and diagnosis and treatment protocols — and are working with area nursing homes in an effort to limit the spread of C. difficile throughout the healthcare continuum.
Medicare penalizes 23 New Jersey hospitals over errors, infections
DECEMBER 18, 2014, 11:44 PM LAST UPDATED: THURSDAY, DECEMBER 18, 2014, 11:48 PM
BY LINDY WASHBURN
STAFF WRITER |
THE RECORD
The federal government will reduce its Medicare payments to 23 hospitals in the state — including six in North Jersey — in a crackdown on hospital errors and infections.
The list of hospitals, released Thursday, includes Hackensack University Medical Center, St. Mary’s Hospital in Passaic and Bergen Regional Medical Center in Paramus. In all, 721 hospitals nationwide will see their Medicare payments cut by 1 percent for the year that began Oct. 1.
New Jersey was one of 10 states where a third or more of the hospitals were penalized.
The financial incentives and public reporting are a two-pronged strategy under the health care reform law known as Obamacare aimed at reducing harm to patients from hospital stays. Hospital errors are estimated to cost Americans more than $17 billion a year and contribute to the deaths of 180,000 Medicare patients alone.
And because Medicare, the federal insurance program for those over 65, is one of the largest sources of hospital revenue, even a 1 percent reduction can have a sizable impact on health care facilities.
For example, Hackensack University Medical Center, with $1.2 billion in revenue in 2012, had more than $263 million in Medicare payments that year. So a reduction of 1 percent would cost it nearly $3 million.
https://www.northjersey.com/news/medicare-penalizes-23-new-jersey-hospitals-over-errors-infections-1.1169219
