Cape Regional Achieves Mentor Status in Partnership for Patients – New Jersey

COURT HOUSE — The New Jersey Hospital Association announced that Cape Regional Medical Center has achieved Mentor Status for its work in the Partnership for Patients – New Jersey initiative which measures ten healthcare-acquired conditions (HAC’s).
Mentor Status means that Cape Regional Medical Center received the highest score for their efforts linked to decreasing hospital acquired urinary catheter infections. These efforts begin when the patient arrives at the Emergency Room and continue after discharge as the team works collaboratively within the community by reaching out to long term care facilities and home care agencies to ensure the best possible outcomes for the patients.
“Cape Regional Medical Center is a longtime partner of the New Jersey Hospital Association (NJHA) for all ten of the Hospital Acquired Conditions or HACs,” stated Noreen DiPadova, BS, RRT, Director of Quality and Risk Management. “This partnership has contributed to ongoing success as healthcare transforms throughout the State of New Jersey and across the country. Cape Regional Medical Center continues to embrace the use of technology to hardwire processes that ultimately minimize or eliminate infection rates and hospital acquired conditions,” DiPadova concluded.
Statewide, Partnership for Patients – New Jersey participants averted 9,206 adverse patient events in 2013 and saved up to $125 million in healthcare costs. In the project’s first year, adverse drug events dropped by 50 percent; surgical site infections decreased by 59 percent; and the incidence of pressure ulcers was reduced by 43 percent. Of the ten healthcare-acquired conditions being tracked, each area has posted a decrease since the beginning of the Partnership for Patients initiative.
For patients, this work has resulted in healthcare that is safer, more efficient and ultimately more affordable. Based on this work, and reflected in the data, patients in a New Jersey hospital today are less likely to develop a post-surgical infection; experience an adverse event from improper medication or a fall; get pneumonia, a urinary tract infection or a blood stream infection or develop a pressure ulcer while hospitalized.
For more information about Cape Regional Medical Center’s role in New Jersey’s initiative, please visit www.njha.com/pfp.
About NJHA’s Partnership for Patients Program:
NJHA’s Health Research and Educational Trust of New Jersey was selected by Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services in December, 2011 to bring the Partnership for Patients initiative to New Jersey Hospitals as part of a “hospital engagement network,” or HEN. Sixty-three of the state’s 72 acute care facilities joined NJHA’s HEN. NJHA’s effort was among 26 HENs established nationwide.
Cape Regional Medical Center is a member of the Penn Cancer Network and an affiliate of Penn Medicine for Cancer Care, Cardiac Care and Vascular Care. Cape Regional Medical Center is accredited by and received the Gold Seal of Approval from The Joint Commission. For additional information on the Medical Center and its programs, please login to our web site at www.CapeRegional.com or contact Susan Staeger, Marketing & Public Relations Coordinator at 609-463-2059.