Beebe Healthcare recognizes employee quality initiatives

Beebe Healthcare recognized employees and physicians for their dedication and commitment to high-quality patient care during the Seventh Annual Quality and Safety Awards Banquet held recently at Kings Creek Country Club.

The evening represented the culmination of a year's work by 26 teams made up of more than 200 Beebe team members who designed and implemented process improvement initiatives positively impacting the quality of patient care.

Three of the 26 teams were presented with awards for their outstanding projects, which solved quality or safety problems identified in a hospital setting.

"These awards recognize the three winning teams, as well as the other 26 teams that submitted applications for this year's Quality and Safety Awards banquet," said Jeffrey M. Fried, FACHE, president and CEO of Beebe Healthcare. "Each year, we are thrilled to see the innovative and thoughtful ideas that our team members come up with to improve our internal processes and systems for the benefit of our patients. We also are thrilled to see how the number of teams has increased."

Fried noted that Beebe is striving to be a highly reliable organization, which is one that has systems in place to accomplish quality and safety goals and to avoid potentially catastrophic errors.

"We look for teams that identify problems on their own, and that look at quality and data to drive performance improvement. It is these efforts that are driving us toward becoming a highly reliable organization. The three teams that received awards tonight demonstrated the ability to go above and beyond," said Fried.

Stephen Fanto, MD, chair of the board of directors quality and safety committee, introduced the three teams, who then formally presented their project goals, methodologies and solutions. He also pointed out how exciting it has been to see the growth in the number of teams participating in the awards program and thanked those that attended the banquet.

Fanto, together with Fried, Beebe Board of Directors Chairman the Hon. William Swain Lee and Beebe Board of Directors Vice Chairman David A. Herbert presented the awards. More than 110 people attended the banquet, including members of the 26 teams.

The three award-winning teams were: Surgical Infection Prevention Process Improvement Team, Team Daily Management, and Reducing Hospital-Onset Clostridium difficile Infections team.