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News Release

Media Contact:

Christina Chavira
Communications Specialist
530.332.5589 office; 530.588.4411 cell
christina.chavira@enloe.org

Enloe Medical Center reviews quality accomplishments,
establishes new quality goals

CHICO, Calif., May 27, 2011 – Enloe Medical Center adopted four new quality initiatives after its third-annual Quality Summit, where medical staff  members (physicians) and employees highlighted quality advances and reinforced their dedication to continual quality improvement.

“Infusing a hardwired culture of quality throughout Enloe is one of the main outcomes of the Quality Summit experience,” said Marcia Nelson, MD, Vice President of Medical Affairs at Enloe Medical Center. “Demonstrating that improvements can be made and sustained is central to our work.”

The Chair of Enloe’s Board of Trustees, Matthews Jackson, Sr., presented the 2010 Quality Summit Award to one of Enloe’s patient care units: First Floor Medical Neurology. The department was recognized for achieving specialized training for nurses and creating strong collaborative teams to care for stroke patients. Their work has decreased the length of stay for stroke patients while also increasing the number of stroke patients who have been able to return home directly from the hospital rather than requiring additional rehabilitative care. First Floor Medical Neurology is part of the Enloe Stroke Program, which received the American Heart Association/American Stroke Association’s Get with the Guidelines Award for four consecutive years in recognition of commitment and success in implementing excellent care for stroke patients according to evidence-based guidelines.

Also at the summit, employees and medical staff members voted on the 35 quality projects submitted by Enloe departments, and the winner was selected by Enloe Medical Center’s Medical Executive Committee.

Among the accomplishments highlighted at the summit was recognition from the Institute for Healthcare Improvement (IHI) -- the leader in innovative best practice – which presented two of Enloe’s quality projects at the IHI International Forum in December. The Joint Commission added these projects to its Leading Practices Library, accessible as a resource to all Joint Commission-accredited hospitals. In another accomplishment, the 2010 Planetree Annual Conference prominently featured Enloe as an example of an organization in which strong leadership has led to exceptional patient-centered care.

The summit also reviewed gains made toward the initiatives set in 2010, including:

• Focus on antibiotic-resistant bacteria: Enloe’s new rapid MRSA screening technology enables the medical center to test patients previously identified as having MRSA bacteria. Negative test results enabled many to avoid being placed in isolation. More than 500 isolation days were avoided in the first nine months of using this screening.

• Improving patient care efficiency: Enloe’s Emergency Department streamlined the registration process, providing more timely care for patients and resulting in fewer patients who left without being seen (LWBS). The LWBS rate is a measure that hospitals nationwide track. Streamlined procedures at Enloe have also shaved, by as much as 75 minutes, the time less complex patients have had to wait to be discharged.

• Improve newborn health: Research shows that babies do better when they are delivered on or after 39 weeks of pregnancy if no medical need exists for an earlier delivery. Collaboration between obstetricians, pediatricians and their patients can ensure that elective deliveries meet that goal. In the first quarter of 2011, no babies at Enloe Medical Center were electively delivered before 39 weeks.

In a meeting after the Quality Summit, medical staff leaders, as well as the Enloe Board of Trustees and Enloe senior managers, selected the quality initiatives for 2011-2012:

• Improve throughput: Zero boarding: Improve processes so that patients are moved in a timely fashion when transferred to another unit or discharged home.

• Reduce readmissions: Align inpatient and outpatient providers to help patients successfully transition out of the hospital.

• Create evidence-based treatment orders: Incorporate current research evidence into new

treatment order sets, supporting development of Enloe’s electronic medical record.

• Trauma surgery efficiency: Streamline processes to swiftly mobilize clinical teams once the decision is made to perform trauma surgery.

In addition to these four new initiatives, each of the quality initiatives from prior years will continue to be monitored, refined and shared as part of Enloe’s culture of quality. To review the Quality Summit Annual Report for 2011, visit www.enloe.org/quality.

“Improvement just takes people dedicated to doing things better,” said Dr. Nelson, “and that is what we are all about at Enloe Medical Center.”


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Enloe Medical Center is a local, nonprofit health care organization. For more information, please call 530/332-7300 or visit us online at http://www.enloe.org.   Enloe Medical Center is located at 1531 Esplanade Chico, Calif.  95926.