LifePoint Health Named Recipient of 2017 John M. Eisenberg Award for Innovation in Patient Safety

Business Wire

Company’s National Quality Program, Created in Partnership with Duke University Health System, Recognized for Success in Improving Safety Culture and Reducing Harms in Local Communities

BRENTWOOD, Tenn.--(BUSINESS WIRE)-- LifePoint Health® (NASDAQ:LPNT) today announced that it has been named the recipient of the 2017 John M. Eisenberg Award for Innovation in Patient Safety at the Local Level. Presented annually by The Joint Commission and the National Quality Forum (NQF), the prestigious Eisenberg Awards acknowledge major achievements in healthcare quality and patient safety.

The first investor-owned health system to earn an Eisenberg Award, LifePoint is being recognized for its National Quality Program, a structured process for ensuring consistent, high standards of quality and patient safety. The program, created in partnership with Duke University Health System, has led to significant enhancements across the LifePoint network, including a more than 60 percent improvement in aggregate patient safety.

“Receiving the John M. Eisenberg Award is an honor and one of the proudest moments of our company,” said Bill Carpenter, chairman and chief executive officer of LifePoint Health. “Since our company was founded, we committed ourselves to always putting quality and patient safety first. We, along with our partners at Duke, created the LifePoint National Quality Program as a way to institutionalize and ensure this undisputed top priority and way of life across our system. This recognition is a testament to the hard work and commitment of our dedicated employees, physicians and leaders across the nation.”

The LifePoint National Quality Program is a data-driven program implemented in LifePoint’s facilities across the nation. Rooted in patient-centeredness, the program is focused on leadership that empowers people, proven systems of performance improvement, and a culture of safety. This initiative has helped create a highly reliable culture of safety and drive enhancements across the LifePoint system, including a 62 percent improvement in aggregate patient safety compared to the company’s 2010 baseline and 12 months of zero central-line infections at 73 percent of its hospitals. Additionally, from 2010 to 2017, hospital-acquired infections at LifePoint hospitals’ decreased by 78 percent for urinary tract infections, 58 percent for sepsis infection, and 73 percent for pneumonia.

“The LifePoint National Quality Program has established at the hospital and system level an ongoing, measurable approach to driving sustainable improvements in patient safety, quality and patient experience,” said Rusty Holman, MD, chief medical officer for LifePoint Health. “Because of the diverse hospitals within the LifePoint system, this program offers many lessons for how healthcare facilities of all types and sizes serving a variety of patient populations can operationalize quality, create a national learning laboratory, and engineer a sustainable culture of safety.”

The Eisenberg Awards, launched in 2002, honor the late John M. Eisenberg, MD, MBA, former administrator of the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ). An impassioned advocate for healthcare quality improvement, Eisenberg was a member of NQF’s founding board of directors, chaired the federal government’s Quality Interagency Coordination Task Force and personally led AHRQ’s grant program to support patient safety research.

Each year, Eisenberg Awards honor those making strides in innovating patient safety and quality at the individual level, local level and national level. The honorees for individual and national recognition for their work in the field of patient safety and quality of care are:

Individual Achievement: Thomas H. Gallagher, MD, professor and associate chair, Department of Medicine, and professor, Department of Bioethics and Humanities, University of Washington, Seattle.
Innovation in Patient Safety and Quality at the National Level: Children’s Hospitals’ Solutions for Patient Safety, a network of more than 130 children’s hospitals in the United States and Canada.

“Congratulations to Dr. Gallagher, LifePoint Health and Children’s Hospitals’ Solutions for Patient Safety for their achievements in the relentless pursuit of patient safety and quality improvement,” said Mark R. Chassin, MD, FACP, MPP, MPH, president and CEO, The Joint Commission. “All three recipients are committed to providing highly reliable health care — care that is consistently excellent and safe across all services and settings. It is through innovative work like theirs that we can make great strides in achieving zero patient harm.”

“The 2017 Eisenberg Award winners inspire all of us to continue our collective efforts to make healthcare better and safer for every patient,” said Shantanu Agrawal, MD, MPhil, president and CEO, National Quality Forum. “Through data, collaboration, transparency, education, and patient engagement, the Eisenberg winners’ innovative approaches move us closer toward our universal goal to eliminate patient harm.”

The John M. Eisenberg Awards were presented at NQF’s Annual Conference in Washington, DC, on March 12, 2018, and will be featured in the July 2018 issue of The Joint Commission Journal on Quality and Patient Safety.

About LifePoint Health

LifePoint Health® (NASDAQ:LPNT) is a leading healthcare company dedicated to Making Communities Healthier®. Through its subsidiaries, it provides quality inpatient, outpatient and post-acute services close to home. LifePoint owns and operates community hospitals, regional health systems, physician practices, outpatient centers and post-acute facilities in 22 states. It is the sole community healthcare provider in the majority of the non-urban communities it serves. More information about the company can be found at www.LifePointHealth.net. All references to "LifePoint," "LifePoint Health" or the "Company" used in this release refer to affiliates or subsidiaries of LifePoint Health, Inc.