Behind the Scenes: Quality Care

Quality Healthcare Close to Home

By: Tari Yourzek, RN, BSN Chief Nursing Officer

Sitting in a meeting of my peers recently, I was struck by how much time we spend talking about quality and what it means in healthcare and specifically to Boundary Community Hospital. As a hospital we have chosen to be accredited by DNV-GL along with the other five hospitals in North Idaho. Within healthcare, DNV-GL helps hospitals achieve excellence by improving quality and patient safety through hospital accreditation, managing infection risk, management system certification and training. DNV-GL’s accreditation program is the only one to integrate the ISO 9001 Quality Management System with the Medicare Conditions of Participation (COP). By earning accreditation, Boundary Community Hospital has demonstrated it meets or exceeds patient safety standards (COP) set forth by the U.S. Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services. The DNV-GL program is consistent with our long-term commitment to quality and patient safety. The ability to integrate ISO 9001 quality standards with our clinical and financial processes is a major step forward.

DNV-GL’s accreditation program, called NIAHO® (National Integrated Accreditation of Healthcare Organizations), involves annual hospital surveys and encourages hospitals to openly share information across departments and to discover improvements in clinical workflows and safety protocols. A few months ago, it was our Extended Care Facility’s turn for the annual survey. The Survey Team was extremely thorough, checking through all of the records and talking with our staff. The results were a 100% deficiency free survey – very rare for a nursing home.

This experience brought home the realization that we have an outstanding staff at Boundary Community Hospital. The entire staff, both medical and non-medical, is committed to quality patient care and caring about the people of Boundary County, continuously making a conscious effort to improve our services. Their attitude toward a culture of quality is reflected in their efforts to stay ahead of standards of care, setting an example for other small rural hospitals.

How do you define quality healthcare? It’s been my experience that quality healthcare can be defined as providing best practice care with the most up-to-date resources by empathetic
and caring staff. That’s what we have and why Boundary Community Hospital has been recognized by the American Hospital Association as a high performing hospital for clinical quality.

Quality healthcare, close to home. It’s important.

Boundary Community Hospital salutes our staff for providing quality patient care and for their excellent service, attention to detail, thoroughness, and the compassionate care that they provide to the community.