2008 Awards and Recognition

September 2008 – UH Case Medical Center's MICU Earns Beacon Award for Fifth Consecutive Year; SICU Awarded for Second Consecutive Year.

UH Case Medical Center's Medical Intensive Care Unit (MICU) and Surgical Intensive Care Unit (SICU) have been awarded the Beacon Award for Critical Care Excellence. The Beacon Award is given by the American Association of Critical Care Nurses (AACN) and recognizes the nation's top hospitals' critical care units. UH Case Medical Center's MICU is the only intensive care unit in the nation to receive this distinction over four consecutive years.

UH Case Medical Center's MICU and SICU are recognized as a Beacon Award winner due to the units' commitment to the highest quality standards in nurse recruitment and retention, patient outcomes, staff training, healthy work environments, leadership and evidence-based practice and research.

In establishing the award, AACN, the world's largest specialty nursing organization, carefully considered a number of factors. The Beacon Award for Critical Care Excellence is awarded twice yearly. To determine whether a critical care unit had earned recognition as a Beacon Award winner, the unit must have:

• Recognized excellence in the intensive care environments in which nurses work and critically ill patients live;
• Recognized excellence of the highest quality measures, processes, structures and outcomes based upon evidence;
• Recognized excellence in collaboration, communication, and partnerships that support the value of healing and humane environments;
• Developed a program that contributes to actualization of AACN's mission, vision and values.

Highlights from this year's Beacon application included:

• Exceptional quality outcomes related to:
  • ventilator associated pneumonias
  • central lines
  • urinary tract infections
  • deep vein thrombosis
  • Skin breakdown/pressure ulcers
• Strong sense of interdisciplinary engagement
• Commitment to patient and family centered care
• Consistent use of evidence based medicine/practice
• Dynamic and cohesive team approach to problem solving
• Excellence in communication

January 2008 – The Department of Ophthalmology and Visual Sciences at UH Case Medical Center was awarded $110,000 in unrestricted funds by Research to Prevent Blindness, the world's leading voluntary organization supporting eye research. The funds will allow the department to continue to identify the causes, treatment and prevention of blinding diseases.

January 2008 – UH Home Care Services Earns HomeCare Elite^™ Designation

University Hospitals Home Care Services was recently designated a 2007 HomeCare Elite™ provider by OCS, a leading post-acute healthcare information company, and Decision Health™, a leading provider of consulting and information services for health care providers nationwide.

HomeCare Elite is a compilation of the most successful Medicare-certified home care providers in the United States. The annual review lists the top 25 percent of home care agencies nationally based on publicly available performance measures in quality of care, performance improvement and financial performance. The categories are weighted, and quality of care comprises the bulk of the scoring.

The award comes on the heels of UH Home Care Services' recommendation-free Medicare survey and scoring 100 percent on publicly reported quality measures that are at or above the state of Ohio benchmarks in all quality categories.

UH Home Care Services is one of the largest home care agencies in Ohio serving more than 15,000 patients annually. UH Home Care's wide range of services includes home intravenous medication therapies; skilled nursing; physical, occupational and speech therapy; social services; and home health aide services. Integrating these services with hospital, outpatient and physician services produces superior clinical outcomes and customer satisfaction, and significantly reduces the risks associated with fragmented care delivery.