VHA, a nationwide cooperative of community hospitals, has recognized RMH Healthcare as a leader in preventing central line-associated bloodstream infections and has highlighted RMH’s clinical practices on its website as a Leading Practice Blueprint.
“This is of huge significance for our organization,” said Becky Brubaker, RMH infection prevention and control preventionist. “It shows that we are using evidence-based clinical practices to guide our processes here.”
A central line is a catheter placed into a vein in the arm, neck, chest or groin to administer fluids or medications, or to obtain certain types of blood test results or cardiovascular measurements, like central venous pressures. Central line bloodstream infection is a serious medical condition that can lead to sepsis (bloodstream infection) and/or death, explained Brubaker.
The incidence of central line bloodstream infections has decreased dramatically at RMH over the past three years, Brubaker noted—from nine in 2008 to four in 2009 and only one in 2010.
“Our intensive care unit has now gone more than 17 months without a central line bloodstream infection, and our medical-surgical units went 11 months without one,” she said. “Both are phenomenal accomplishments.”
VHA learned of RMH’s success in reducing central line infections from the Virginia Department of Health (VDH) website. Since July 2008, Virginia hospitals, including RMH, have been mandated by the Commonwealth of Virginia to report infection data, including central line-associated bloodstream infections, to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), Brubaker explained.
VHA’s clinical blueprints are developed in collaboration with hospitals that demonstrate leading-edge performance in clinical areas. The blueprints are developed and published on the VHA website to share leading-edge practices among VHA hospitals.
On Feb. 10, a VHA blueprint team visited RMH to develop the central line-associated bloodstream infection (CLABSI) blueprint. A team of RMH staff—including nurses, physicians, administrators, infection control staff and other clinicians—worked with the VHA team to analyze the key factors that have contributed to RMH’s success in preventing central line bloodstream infections.
“Essentially what we’ve done is standardize the process of central line placement and maintenance throughout the organization,” said Fran Prickett, RN. “And we’ve greatly enhanced the safety aspects of those processes to prevent infections.”
Prickett, who works in the RMH Treatment Center, is one of the nurses who helped lead the hospital’s campaign to reduce central line infections over the past three years.
The RMH CLABSI blueprint was recently posted on the VHA website to allow other hospitals to see how RMH has accomplished a life-saving reduction in central line infections.
“From the literature, we already knew we were in line with all the evidence-based practices to reduce infection in central lines,” said Brubaker. “But it’s nice to have that validation from a huge networking organization like VHA.”
Founded in 1977, VHA provides healthcare industry-related services to members who join the company’s cooperative network. VHA serves about 1,400 not-for-profit hospitals nationwide. Its members also include some 30,000 non-acute healthcare organizations such as imaging centers, home health care agencies, and pharmacies. Services include financial analysis, clinical improvement programs, public policy advocacy, and supply chain management.
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