Transformation Milestones

Penn Highlands Celebrates • For staff: • We reduced employee transformation results. Here are infectious exposures by 20%. TRANSFORMATION • We reduced employee needlestick injuries by 33%. MILESTONES Service Excellence • We improved overall patient A message from Dr. Based on feedback we heard from Departments by 12%. Istikram Qaderi, Penn our patients in patient surveys and • We improved overall patient Highlands Healthcare a third-party vendor that conducts experience in the outpatient Chief Quality & analyses for healthcare organizations setting by 9%. Transformation Officer throughout the country, here are a • We improved overall patient few areas where we improved across experience in ambulatory In recent issues of all of Penn Highlands between 2019 surgery areas by 7%. HealthLines, we’ve explained how and 2020: • We reduced the number of seriously we take our patients’ patient grievances by 31%. comments when you complete Quality Excellence the surveys you receive following We improved patient flow across the All this shows the great work your experience at Penn Highlands system: we have started together on our Healthcare. As we continue to • For patients who needed to journey to high reliability in these move forward with our systembe admitted after entering our past two years. As I have shared with wide transformation journey and Emergency Departments, we our team, when we hold ourselves the "Creating Excellence" vision that reduced their arrival to our to the highest standard, it's clear we launched in 2019, I recently inpatient units by 19 minutes, we are truly capable of delivering applauded our team across the or 7.8%, which exceeded our the highest-quality care that is Penn Highlands system for doing an internal goal. unmatched by any other healthcare amazing job to deliver highly reliable • We reduced Emergency organization. care to our patients over this past Department arrival to discharge year. by 6.8%, addressing our patients’ At Penn Highlands, we are care and allowing them to return committed to providing the best There's no question that because of home faster. experience for our patients, as well COVID-19, we faced some especially as our staff. We are thankful to you, burdensome challenges toward the Safety our communities, for your support, end of our fiscal • For patients: especially during the COVID-19 year in spring— • We reduced hospitalpandemic. With your confidence but thanks to our acquired C-diff rates by 42.5%. in what we do at Penn Highlands, staff, we're still we continue striving to create an seeing remarkable excellent experience for our patients. experience in our Emergency just a few examples to demonstrate the successes our Do you fill out your surveys? Patient surveys are sent after a stay at one of our hospitals. If you receive one, please team has achieved in providing highquality, safe, and PATIENT SURVEYS fill it out. We want to know how we are doing. patient-centric care Some come via U.S. Mail (especially if to Penn Highlands you are a Medicare patient) and others patients. may come via emails and text message.