For Nurses, Many Hands (and a Single Handoff Tool) Make Safe Work

There’s no arguing that a big job whose tasks are divvied up among many people goes faster than if one person tackles it. But making the pieces of those tasks come back together unruffled can be tricky when they’re complex, as health issues often are. As of March, nurses at UR Medicine’s Strong Memorial and Highland Hospitals added a handoff tool in eRecord to their proverbial tool belts. The tool aggregates vital patient info--snapping together the pieces of her story for a clean handoff.

URMC Team Helps Nursing Home Referrals Go Electronic, Makes Relics of Fax Machines

It’s electric! Boogie woogie. Over the past year or so, a pioneering team made up of staff from Strong Memorial Hospital, Highland Hospital, Highlands at Brighton, Highlands Living Center, and ePartner planned and implemented the capability to refer patients electronically to nursing homes across Monroe County. Talk about an “Electric Slide”!

‘UPP’ and Running: Care Improvement Program Melds URMC’s Biggest Priorities

Just a month ago, Strong Memorial Hospital rolled out the “Unit-based Performance Program” (UPP), a major initiative that will—by braiding the three together—help inpatient units better coordinate their improvement efforts around 1) patient safety, 2) the ICARE experience, and 3) operational efficiency.

Curbing Readmissions: Tricky Business, but URMC Named ‘Top Performer’

When it comes to the thorny problem of cutting hospital readmissions rates, a new report cites URMC as a top performer. In early October, leaders from “Best Practices for Better Care”—a patient quality- and safety-improvement initiative quarterbacked by both the University HealthSystem Consortium and the Association of American Medical Colleges—reached out, asking URMC leaders to spill their secrets for success.

Scores Prove: Hospitalists Paving Way for Better Patient Experience

As chief of URMC’s Division of Hospital Medicine, Andrew Rudmann, M.D., and fellow hospitalists are looking to make the hospital more intelligible, and a little smaller. Their techniques—handing business cards to patients, calling home to “check up” after they’ve left— are certainly creative. More importantly, they’re working.