The Leapfrog Group released its fall 2018 Hospital Safety Grades November 8, assigning letter grades to more than 2,600 acute care hospitals for patient safety performance. Twelve Kentucky hospitals earned an A grade:

Baptist Health Lexington Clark Regional Medical Center, Winchester Georgetown Community Hospital Harrison Memorial Hospital, Cynthiana Middlesboro ARH Hospital Norton Audubon Hospital, Louisville Norton Hospital, Louisville St. Elizabeth Edgewood St. Elizabeth Florence St. Elizabeth Fort Thomas TriStar Greenview Regional Hospital, Bowling Green Whitesburg ARH Hospital Kentucky, as a whole, also moved up in the national rankings to 33rd overall. The changes in Leapfrog's methodology for this round of grades are available at http://www.hospitalsafetygrade.org/media/file/Leapfrog-Hospital-Safety-Grade_Fall-2018_Scoring-Methodology-Changes.pdf.

In recognition of the hard work of health care professionals, which has caused health care-associated infections to decline, while acknowledging the importance of the continued vigilance of professionals and the public to use best practices in preventing infections, Governor Matthew Bevin proclaimed October 14-20, 2018, as Kentucky Infection Prevention Week.

View the Governor's full proclamation for all the details. For more information on Infection Prevention week, visit http://professionals.site.apic.org/.

The 2018 A Day for Infection Preventionists will be held November 13 in Louisville. This educational event is aimed at supporting Kentucky infection prevention professionals in their daily work to reduce health care associated infections and provide quality patient care. The one-day conference builds on foundational skills provided in previous educational offerings and explores topics with emerging importance. The target audience includes infection preventionists, chief nursing officers, risk managers, quality improvement and patient safety personnel in the hospital.

CEUs are available for attendees.

For agenda details, view the brochure. To reserve your place, use the convenient online registration.

If you have any questions, please contact Sharon Perkins at KHA (sperkins@kyha.com).

Governor Matt Bevin was joined by state legislators and officials from St. Elizabeth Florence on Wednesday, as he ceremonially signed recently enacted Senate Bill 42. 

Sponsored by Senator John Schickel, SB 42 permits a law enforcement officer to make an arrest for assault in the 4th degree, when the violation occurs in a hospital and the officer has probable cause.

Pictured above are (left to right) Representative Diane St. Onge, Representative 
Sal Santoro, a city police department representative, Senator John Schickel, St. Elizabeth Healthcare President Garren Colvin, a sheriff's department representative and Governor Bevin.

The 2017 Healthcare Coalition Conference is September 26-28 at the Hyatt Regency Lexington and the Lexington Conference Center. The Conference is designed to meet the educational needs of health care engineers, professionals involved in managing safety & security in health care facilities, as well as professionals in health care supply chain and materials management. 

The Healthcare Coalition Conference will include top-notch educational content, hours of continuing education credits, as well as ongoing opportunities to discuss emerging issues and best practices with colleagues, vendors and consultants. 

Registration is available online at http://kshe.org/event/2017HCCRegistration.

Don’t miss out on the March 14 KIPSQ Safe Table on Health IT Safe Practices at the Crowne Plaza Louisville Airport. This event will be held in conjunction with the KHA Quality Symposium, March 14-15.

The safe table will begin at 9:00 a.m. (ET) with speakers from ECRI Institute and end with lunch speaker Wes Butler. Please plan to attend this exciting event and learn more about the risk of copy and paste. This is a free event for KIPSQ members, and CEU hours are provided.

Event Links Quality Symposium Brochure Symposium Registration Safe Table Agenda...

Electronic prescribing (e-prescribing), which is intended to ensure that accurate, error-free and understandable prescriptions are sent directly to pharmacies, was found to lower the risks among diabetes patients of experiencing adverse drug events (ADEs) that required emergency department visits or hospitalizations. In an AHRQ-supported article, researchers examined 2011–2013 data for 3.1 million Medicare Part D beneficiaries who were 66 or older and had taken antidiabetes medications for at least 90 days.

Their analysis, published in Medical Care, showed 21 ADEs per 1,000 beneficiaries who had at least 75 percent of their medications e-prescribed. Beneficiaries with less e-prescribing, meanwhile, had more adverse drug events — with the highest rate, 44 events per 1,000 diabetes patients, occurring for those patients who had 0.1 percent to 24.9 percent of their prescriptions handled electronically.

Access the abstract...

The K-HIIN Kick-Off Meeting will provide insight into how the Kentucky Hospital Improvement Innovation Network (K-HIIN) will use the successes of the Hospital Engagement Network (HEN) to launch the next phase of this national initiative for quality and outcomes improvement in hospitals. Attendees will learn about the goals and requirements of the HIIN and how the innovations, virtual learning opportunities and hospital-level techniques of the program will take your improvement work to the next level.

View the brochure for agenda details, and register online today to reserve your seat for this important meeting.

If you have any questions, please contact Sharon Perkins at KHA (sperkins@kyha.com).