Ionia County Memorial Hospital

Ionia, MI – Ionia County Memorial Hospital has received the Michigan Center for Rural Health’s 2009 Michigan Rural Health Quality Improvement Award – Award of Excellence. The award acknowledges quality improvement efforts in Emergency Room Transfer performance.

They also received the 2009 Michigan Rural Health Quality Improvement Award for Quality Improvement Achievement. The award acknowledges quality improvement efforts in inpatient clinical performance in the care and treatment of heart failure and pneumonia. This is the first year that the Michigan Center for Rural Health has offered these two awards.

“Award recipients are committed to providing their patients with high quality health care,” said John Barnas, Executive Director, of the Michigan Center for Rural Health. Barnas added “The Michigan Center for Rural Health is pleased to sponsor this award which is a testament to the dedication of hospital staff to provide the right care to the right patient each and every time.”

“Physicians, nurses and other clinical support staff have worked hard to meet and exceed the standards of care for our patients with pneumonia and congestive heart failure. Appropriate use of antibiotics, vaccinations, and smoking cessation counseling are areas in which ICMH has demonstrated excellence,” said Ricki Burk, ICMH Vice President of Patient Care. “Ionia County Memorial Hospital is committed to quality improvement. In the Emergency Department the length of time between arrival at the ED and performance of the initial EKG for patients with chest pain has been reduced by 50% in six months.”

Ionia County Memorial Hospital established multidisciplinary teams in both areas who worked to identify opportunities to improve processes and create interventions that embrace evidence-based medicine. Clinical indicators were based on the Appropriate Care Measure (ACM). ACM is a composite score that captures whether or not a patient received all the care that he or she was eligible to receive. The 2009 Michigan Rural Health Quality Improvement Award – Quality Improvement Achievement Award for inpatient clinical performance was based on an ACM score of 80 to 93%. The 2009 Michigan Rural Health Quality Improvement Award – Award of Excellence in emergency room transfer performance was based on an ACM score of 94% to 100%.

Ionia County Memorial Hospital was honored by The Michigan Center for Rural Health at an awards ceremony during the 10^th Annual Michigan Critical Access Hospital Conference October 29, 2009 in Boyne Falls, Michigan. The Michigan Center for Rural Health is a non-profit organization formed in 1991 as part of a nation-wide, federal and state initiative to recognize the importance of rural health care and to create a mechanism for resources to flow to rural areas.

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Last updated: 23 February, 2010 02:01 PM