Health Care Safety

hands lathered with soap being washed in a sink with a running faucetKeeping patients safe in a health care setting is vital to providing high-quality health care. By continuously focusing on safety, care providers can reduce harm and prevent mortality.

Safety measures embedded at Brookings Health System include:

  • Ongoing staff training and education focused on patient safety
  • Implementation of technology to support safety, such as barcode scanning of medications
  • Implementation of evidence-based practices, such as hand hygiene, to reduce healthcare acquired conditions
  • Identifying root causes for misses, such medication errors and falls, and implementing evidence-based practices to reduce them
  • Non-punitive reporting of errors, system failures and near misses to encourage team members to report any safety concerns

Brookings Health System believes in your right to know how we compare to state national safety benchmarks. The following information offers key safety measures for our hospital services.

Measures from Hospital Compare

The information below shows how safe care is at Brookings Hospital compared to state and national averages. Hospital Compare uses these measure to show serious complications patients experienced during a hospital stay or after having certain inpatient surgical procedures as well as how often patients who were admitted with certain conditions died while they were in the hospital. More information on Brookings Hospital and other hospitals can be found on the Hospital Compare website.

This section shows serious complications that patients with Original Medicare experienced during a hospital stay or after having certain inpatient surgical procedures. These complications can often be prevented if hospitals follow procedures based on best practices and scientific evidence.

Service Brookings Health System National Result
Rate of complications for hip/knee replacement patients Number of cases too small 2.6%
Serious complications No Different than the National Value 1
Deaths among patients with serious treatable complications after surgery Number of cases too small 163.01

 

Healthcare-associated infections, or HAIs, are infections that people get while they’re getting treatment for another condition in a healthcare setting. HAIs can occur in all settings of care, including acute care hospitals, long term acute care hospitals, rehabilitation facilities, surgical centers, cancer hospitals, and skilled nursing facilities. Many of these infections can be prevented through the use of proper procedures and precautions. Below, different HAIs are compared to the U.S. benchmark.

Condition Brookings Health System South Dakota Average National Benchmark
Central line-associated bloodstream infections (CLABSI) in ICUs and select wards (lower numbers are better) Not Available 0.725 1
Catheter-associated urinary tract infections (CAUTI) in ICUs and select wards (lower numbers are better) Not Available 0.690 1
Surgical site infections (SSI) from colon surgery (lower numbers are better) Not Available 1.429 1
Surgical site infections (SSI) from abdominal hysterectomy (lower numbers are better) Not Available 0.451 1
Methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus Aureus (MRSA) blood infections (lower numbers are better) Not Available 0.689 1
Clostridium difficile (C. diff.) intestinal infections (lower numbers are better) Not Available 0.629 1

 

Death rates show how often patients die, for any reason, within 30 days of admission to a hospital.

Measure Brookings Health System National Result
Death rate for COPD patients No Different than the National Rate 8.5%
Death rate for heart attack patients Number of Cases Too Small 12.9%
Death rate for heart failure patients No Different than the National Rate 11.5%
Death rate from pneumonia patients No Different than the National Rate 15.6%
Death rate for stroke patients No Different than the National Rate 13.8%
Death rate for CABG surgery patients Not Available 3.1%