Marcum & Wallace Hospital (MWMH) was recently honored with the Kentucky Hospital Association (KHA) Quality Award. This award is presented to honor hospital leadership and innovation in quality, safety and commitment in patient care.
In the Critical Access Hospital (acute care hospitals with 25 beds or less) Category, MWMH was chosen for the hospital’s Emergency Department (ED) Transformation project. The goal of this project was to improve ED patient flow processes, while making sure that staff have the necessary tools and equipment readily available to do their jobs effectively.
Improvement of these processes and ED function would ultimately result in decreased length of stay for ED patients, improved patient experiences, increased staff engagement and enhanced quality patient outcomes. MWMH engaged a company, TechSolve, to assist in the implementation of a continuous improvement model that is centered on enhancing the patient experience by enabling healthcare providers to identify and eliminate waste from hospital processes by utilizing LEAN principals and tools.
“Our emergency department is the main entry point of care to the hospital,” said Susan Starling, MWMH President & CEO. “We recognized that we had opportunities to improve the experience of our patients. I am proud of the work that has been done to improve the time a patient must wait before they are seen by the doctor. We do not ever want a patient to choose to leave the emergency room prior to being seen by the doctor due to long wait times.”
Marcum & Wallace Hospital has been previously recognized with a Quality Award in 2010, 2012 and 2016.