Local hospital earns patient safety award
Bemidji's North Country Regional Hospital was among 25 hospitals statewide to earn an award recognizing work to prevent the most prevalent types of adverse health events, such as accidental falls.
The Minnesota Hospital Association's Patient Safety Excellence Awards honor hospitals participating in at least one of the association's four safety campaigns. The campaigns target efforts at preventing: pressure ulcers, or bedsores; falls; wrong-site invasive procedures and foreign objects retained during labor and delivery.
NCRH was awarded Safe Site recognition.
To qualify, hospitals must have implemented at least 90 percent of a campaign's required safety measures, such as verifying that they are repositioning at-risk patients at least every two hours to prevent pressure ulcers.
The campaigns are called Safe Skin, Safe from Falls, Safe Site and Safe Count with requirements based on national and state best practices. The requirements are also founded on participating hospitals' sharing of information about adverse health events that occurred at their facilities.
