Mission Earns The Joint Commission’s 2008 Ernest Amory Codman Award

Front Row (L to R): Connie Stalcup, Dale Goode, Beverly Neal, Dr. George Schiffman, Markie Cowley, Jan Brewer

Back Row (L to R): Michelle Luna, Linda Johnson, Dr. Robert Winokur, Peter Bastone, Berto Muniz, Dr. Michael Ritter
Oakbrook Terrace, IL (Nov 12, 08) - The Joint Commission today named Mission Hospital, Mission Viejo, California, a 2008 recipient of the 12th annual Ernest Amory Codman Award. The award recognizes excellence in the use of outcomes measurement by health care organizations to achieve improvements in the quality and safety of health care.

Mission Hospital is one of three recipients of the award in the hospital category nationwide and is being recognized for an initiative to improve care for seriously ill patients who are in the emergency department or on medical-surgical floors rather than the intensive care unit (ICU). The program used a specialized nurse-driven rapid response team with the goal of reducing deaths associated with non-ICU cardiac/respiratory arrests by bringing to the patient’s bedside the necessary staff to help the patient.

Named for the physician regarded in health care as the “father of outcomes measurement,” the Ernest Amory Codman Award showcases the effective use of performance measurement by health care organizations to improve the quality and safety of health care. The Joint Commission also recognizes an individual who has played a significant leadership role in promoting the use of performance measures to improve health care services, or who has made major contributions to the development and testing of performance measures or the science and art of quality improvement. A panel of national experts in quality measurement and improvement selected the five recipients of the 2008 Awards.

“The 2008 Codman Award recipients exemplify how performance measurement improves the quality and safety of health care,” says Mark R. Chassin, M.D., M.P.P., M.P.H., president, The Joint Commission. “Their achievements demonstrate the progress that can be made when process and outcomes measures are combined into meaningful practices that result in better patient care.”

Mission Hospital’s award-winning initiative is especially relevant given a national trend within hospitals where seriously ill inpatients are at greater risk for increased mortality due to a lack of available ICU or telemetry beds. Instead, these at-risk patients are occupying medical-surgical beds or being held in the emergency department. After reviewing two years of data, the hospital’s Resuscitation Committee determined that better awareness of and attention to the risk of cardiac/respiratory arrests for non-ICU patients could reduce the number of incidents along with mortality rates.

“We believe that each patient, each minute, each day deserves the most advanced care, says Peter F. Bastone, President and Chief Executive Officer, Mission Hospital. “This recognition of our Rapid Response Team for their innovation and dedication to respond to even the slightest change in a patient’s condition is well deserved. This is our second Codman Award and we appreciate and respect the leadership role implicit with this honor from the Joint Commission.”

Mission Hospital’s program reduced cardiac or respiratory arrests outside the ICU from 36 to 16 during a one-year period, and the associated mortality rate for floor code patients decreased from 62 percent to 23 percent during the same timeframe. Inpatient call frequency averaged 102 calls per 1,000 discharges compared to the Institute for Healthcare Improvement critical indicator of effectiveness of more than 25 calls per 1,000 discharges. An additional 120 calls per month were in support of vulnerable patients in the emergency department. Unanticipated transfers of patients from the non-critical care units to the ICU also dropped significantly—from 8 percent of all transfers per hospital discharge to 5 percent—by intervening before their conditions deteriorated.

A not-for-profit health care ministry, the 301-bed acute care Mission Hospital is the largest hospital in south Orange County, California, and one of three trauma centers in Orange County.

Mission Hospital will formally receive the award in November during The Joint Commission and Joint Commission Resources Annual Conference on Quality and Safety in Chicago. Additional award recipients in the following categories are:

• Hospital: Carolinas Medical Center, Charlotte, North Carolina; and Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Medical Center, Cincinnati, Ohio.


• Multiple Organization: Novant Health, Winston-Salem, North Carolina.


• Individual (posthumous): Shukri F. Khuri, M.D., former professor of surgery at Harvard Medical School, former chief of cardiothoracic surgery at VA Boston Healthcare Systems and former vice chairman, department of surgery, at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston, Massachusetts.

Founded in 1951, The Joint Commission seeks to continuously improve the safety and quality of care provided to the public through the provision of health care accreditation and related services that support performance improvement in health care organizations. The Joint Commission evaluates and accredits more than 15,000 health care organizations and programs in the United States, including more than 8,000 hospitals and home care organizations, and more than 6,200 other health care organizations that provide long term care, assisted living, behavioral health care, laboratory and ambulatory care services. The Joint Commission also accredits health plans, integrated delivery networks, and other managed care entities. In addition, The Joint Commission provides certification of disease-specific care programs, primary stroke centers, and health care staffing services. An independent, not-for-profit organization, The Joint Commission is the nation's oldest and largest standards-setting and accrediting body in health care. Learn more about The Joint Commission at www.jointcommission.org


Mission earns Joint Commission’s 2008 Codman Award (pdf)

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