LAKEPORT, Calif. – Sutter Lakeside Hospital is making upgrades to its facilities in order to improve safety for its patients and staff.

This month, Sutter Lakeside Hospital will install bariatric lifts in all four of the intensive care patient rooms. These lifts are mounted on the ceiling and allow hospital staff to transfer, lift and transport patients using an overhead track system. The lifts can be raised and lowered by a motor via a control panel.

“These lifts will improve both patient and staff safety,” said Chief Administrative Officer Siri Nelson. “Nurses and aides, in particular, do a lot of lifting throughout their workday. These lifts will make it possible to lift and transport critically ill patients safely and effectively with very little physical effort on the behalf of staff.”

The new lifts are just one piece of Sutter Lakeside’s overall plan to continue to highlight patient safety.

This fall, Sutter Lakeside Hospital launched a standardized communication technique known as S-BAR. This communication technique allows staff and physicians to share patient information in a concise and structured format, ensuring all critical information is passed from one caregiver to the next.

S-BAR, which stands for “situation, background, assessment, recommendation,” is used during patient hand-offs at nursing shift changes, patient transfers to other levels of care and critical conversations between physicians and staff.

“S-BAR was actually designed by the U.S. Navy as a communication system. Hospitals around the country have used it to improve efficiency and accuracy, so that patients get the right kind of care that they need when they need it,” explained Teresa Campbell, chief nursing executive at Sutter Lakeside.

Sutter Lakeside Hospital is also continuing to improve its documentation related to Core Measures.

Core Measures are designed to improve the quality of health care by instituting a national, standardized performance measurement system. They were created as part of value based purchasing by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services.

There are 35 different Core Measures that fall into four categories: care for pneumonia patients, congestive heart failure, surgical care infection prevention and acute myocardial infarction.

Each category includes a list of actions that represent evidence based clinical practices that have demonstrated improvements in patients’ health over time. Core Measures have been proven to prevent recurrences and reduce the risk of complications.

“Core Measures help us improve patient care quality by focusing on the results of their care,” said Tammy Spitzer, RN and quality delivery specialist with Sutter Lakeside. “Instead of reviewing patient charts after their release from the hospital, we now evaluate their charts during their inpatient stay to ensure that all patients are treated with the state-of-the-art care practices.”

“I’m excited to be a part of health care today at Sutter Lakeside,” said Sutter Lakeside Chief Administrative Officer Siri Nelson. “We have the tools that we need to ensure that our patients receive the safest care and that our staff is able to perform their jobs with both a high level of accuracy and a low risk of injury.”