Delaware
Quality Award recipients Beebe
Medical Center
Founded
in 1916, Beebe has become the premier health-care facility
in Sussex County, serving a thriving resort area and a growing
year-round population. The focus at Beebe Medical Center is
on process improvement by analyzing and redesigning processes
to make them work correctly every time and to improve quality
and safety and reduce costs.
Beebe
Medical Center, located in Lewes, DE, serves eastern Sussex
County with a variety of medical services, including a 148-bed
hospital, a Home Health Agency, and several outpatient centers
and services. The Medical Center’s mission is to encourage
healthy living, prevent illness, and restore optimal health
with the people residing, working, or visiting the communities
we serve.
Our values
are:
- Safety
- Respect
for the individual
- Patient/customer
satisfaction
- Commitment
to quality
- Personal
responsibility
- Financial
responsibility
- Teamwork
- Integrity
The population
in eastern Sussex County has grown by 55 percent since 1990
from 113,200 to 175,700 residents. Beebe Medical Center has
significantly expanded medical services over the past decade
to meet the needs of this growing year-round community, as
well as the thousands of annual seasonal visitors.
Current
expansion projects Include:
- Development
of an interventional cardiology and heart surgery program
to begin in 2006.
- The
addition of two (2) large operating rooms to accommodate
the equipment that is required for cardiac surgery and other
complex inpatient procedures.
- Expansion
of the Emergency Department (from 18 to 36 beds), the addition
of 42 medical-surgical beds, and the expansion of the Critical
Care Unit (from 12 to 20 beds) will be completed in 2007.
- Construction
of a new, larger Tunnell Cancer Center at the Beebe Health
Campus is underway on Route 24 in Rehoboth Beach and will
be completed by June 2006.
- Conception
for a major outpatient facility in the Millville (Bethany
Beach) area is being planned, which will include expanded
imaging services, physical therapy, a summer emergency center,
and year-round walk-in urgent care.
We believe
that meeting the increasing medical needs of our community
is critical. At the same time, we are focused on providing
the highest quality of care in the safest environment possible.
A Process
Improvement Council and other teams involving nurses, physicians,
Board members, and others meet regularly to monitor safety
and quality measures. We recognize that as good as our team
members are at Beebe Medical Center, no one is perfect. Therefore,
our focus is on process improvement with the idea that we
can analyze and re-design processes to make them work correctly
the first time, and each and every time thereafter. By doing
so, we hope to minimize the potential for human error and
enable better designed processes to be the key for improving
quality and safety and reducing costs.
In addition,
we use external benchmarks to compare our quality and safety
standards with those of other hospitals. Some of these organizations
include, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services Hospital
Compare and Healthgrades, which measure clinical quality and
Press-Ganey, which rates hospitals on measures of customer
service.
In 2003
and 2004, Beebe Medical Center's Department of Medical Affairs
applied for the Delaware Quality Award, and was honored to
receive a Commitment Award in 2003 and a Merit Award in 2004.
Winning twice for the efforts of the Medical Staff Office
inspired the organization as a whole to apply for the award
in 2005.
“The
application and survey process has been an enlightening and
educational experience for all of us. The survey requires
applicants to take a critical look at the major processes
at work in your organization, and rather than being satisfied
with what you are doing, think about how you can make something
better,” said Jeffrey M. Fried. “It’s easy
to come to work every day and continue
to do the same thing you did the day before. It is challenging
to look at each day as a new opportunity to improve.”
Beebe Medical Center is gratified to be presented with the
Delaware Quality Award Merit Award. Receiving a Merit Award
for the Medical Staff Office and for the Medical Center as
an organization--one after the other--is a momentous honor.
“We thank our dedicated employees, physicians, volunteers,
Board members and donors for their contributions in helping
us make improvements that have lead us to receiving this prestigious
award. This achievement would not be possible without the
commitment and dedication of all members of the Beebe Medical
Center family to strive for continuous improvement, and to
make our organization the best it can possibly be.”
said Fried.
|
