Winter Haven Hospital has a comprehensive strategy to attain Service Excellence for our community. Our physicians and employees are involved in a variety of positive initiatives - we have summarized many of them in this issue of Here's To Your Health.

Winter Haven Hospital staff continue to call a sample of our patients after discharge to
assess their perception of the quality of services they received. The results of these calls help us determine our patient satisfaction scores which are compared to national averages. Our goal is to rank in the top 10% of hospitals by the end of
the year.

Our Emergency Department team of physicians and employees have made significant changes and have specific indicators to measure the effectiveness and the efficiency of services provided. We are listening to our patients and responding to their suggestions and we are involving all caregivers in improvement initiatives. As a result, we have seen patient wait times decrease and patient satisfaction scores significantly increase in the Emergency Department.

As noted in this issue's introductory letter
Winter Haven Hospital is very focused
on achieving Magnet Status. An
independent team from the American
Nurses Credentialing Center will evaluate
whether we meet these quality standards so we can join only 100 other hospitals in the country in earning this recognition. We have just begun this important journey, but we are very encouraged by our progress to date.

Newly completed advancements in technology and facility expansion are part of our service excellence focus.

We have significantly upgraded existing equipment and purchased new state of the art equipment for our Radiation Oncology Cancer Center.

In addition, we are constructing two new large operating rooms for open-heart urgery and we have renovated one of our intensive care areas to serve as our new Cardiovascular Intensive Care Unit. We also have purchased a third cardiac catheterization machine so we now have 3 Cath Labs. Our staff are trained and ready to begin angioplasty and openheart surgery in July.

We have initiated numerous new processes and computer technology to
minimize medical errors and maximize patient safety. Nurses check at least two means of patient identification every time they give a medication. Safety briefings are held at each shift change. During these briefings all nursing staff on each unit review any potential safety risks for our patients.

Winter Haven Hospital is also participating
in a landmark study conducted by Medicare (CMS) and Premier, Inc. that rewards hospitals for excellence in applying best practices in patient care. The studies recent report indicate Winter Haven Hospital is ranked in the top 10% of hospitals participating for our care of congestive heart failure patients.

We recently purchased a highly sophisticated Pyxis Medication System that helps assure safe and appropriate medication dispensing. This system allows us to monitor medication dispensing and administration to help make sure we are getting the right medications to patients.

We have also purchased the Alaris IV
(Intravenous) System and PCA Pumps (Patient Controlled Analgesia). These systems have proven extremely successful for the safe administration of IV (Intravenous) medication. The internal computers of these IV administration systems monitor doses and rates to make sure our patients receive the right amount of IV medication.

Our Pharmacy Department recently
installed a highly sophisticated computer
system called Meds Manager. It assists
in connecting Lab tests with medications
and assures we are up to date on newly
discovered medication effects and
interactions.

Additionally, we will be utilizing the many positive attributes of bar coding shortly. Using a scanner, similar to those used in a grocery stores, we will have an additional means to assure patient safety. These numerous efforts have been challenging and exciting. We know our community wants and deserves Service Excellence and all of these enhancements have us focused on this important goal.