Clinical Quality
Our Quality Program
UMMC strives to provide the best possible care for all our patients. That’s why clinical quality has been the number one strategic priority for the University of Mississippi Medical Center since 2015. UMMC has driven its clinical quality improvement program based in the principles of High Reliability. The core pillars to the program are:
- Leadership commitment to zero harm,
- A Culture of Safety aimed at developing trust, accountability, and systems to identify unsafe conditions, and
- Performance Improvement based on accepted robust processes.
Every health care provider and staff member at UMMC owns the responsibility to ensure high quality care and a positive experience for our patients. The key ingredients to our quality improvement strategy from 2016 – 2021 include:
- Focused goals with specific targets for improvement on annual scorecards.
- Simple, timely, actionable data, transparently displayed on the UMMC Intranet.
- Clinically led improvement teams supported by trained process engineers.
- Leadership engagement in setting direction and review of progress.
Using this approach, our work focused on clinical and patient safety metrics - improvement was achieved in all areas:
| Hand hygiene compliance: | 64% increase |
| Hospital-acquired infections: | 60% improvement |
| Patient experience: | 40% improvement |
| Reportable complications: | 33% improvement |
These metrics remain important at UMMC. However, in 2021, UMMC implemented its new five year Strategic Plan: Strategy 2025. This brought a new focus to the UMMC Quality Program with a goal to “Maximize Value in the Quality of Care” which builds on the base of quality improvement established in the initial five years of our program.
VALUE=QUALITY/COST
The importance of continuing to improve quality metrics remains paramount, and bringing the cost of providing care into the equation in the new plan places an emphasis on maximizing value. Focusing on value highlights the importance of effectiveness and efficiency for quality healthcare. Effective healthcare is providing an evidenced-based approach to diagnosis and treatment of patients to ensure we provide the best care utilizing the most appropriate resources. Efficiency in healthcare improves patient care by emphasizing care coordination and team care and eliminating waste. Getting all caregivers to think about efficiency and effectiveness in delivery of health care improves patient care and reputation scores, while reducing costs.