Fort Sanders Sevier Medical Center supports quality and patient safety improvement initiatives, including the sharing of information so hospitals can work collaboratively to improve the health of our community. Fort Sanders Sevier also supports the sharing of performance data with consumers to help them become active participants in their health care decisions.

Fort Sanders Sevier Medical Center's quality care has been recognized in the following ways:

• Recipient of six Tennessee Quality Achievement Awards

• Honored in 2004 with two 5-Star Awards for patient satisfaction by Professional Research Consultants (PRC), a nationally known healthcare marketing research company, for inpatient and OB/GYN care. PRC also recognized Fort Sanders Sevier with a 4-Star Award for outpatient services and eight Inpatient Top Performer awards in the categories of overall cleanliness; quality of discharge instructions; discharge process; doctors' explanations of treatments and tests; nurses' respect for patient privacy; overall teamwork between doctors, nurses and staff; doctors' communication with patients and family, and hospital staff's courtesy and friendliness

• Recognized for its outstanding efforts to improve care for their patients in the areas of surgical infection prevention, heart failure, and pneumonia by QSource Center for Healthcare Quality
• The Fort Sanders Sevier Imaging and Diagnostics Center is accredited by the American College of Radiology (ACR) in mammography, MRI, and ultrasound.

• Partnership with QSource, the Medicare Quality Improvement Organization for Tennessee, on their most recent projects--Surgical Infection Prevention, Heart Failure, and Pneumonia--being one of only a few hospitals in Tennessee to tackle three projects

• Participation in other quality improvement activities for heart attack, pregnancy and related conditions, implementation of care designs, patient satisfaction, as well as the Transformational Intensive Care project

• JCAHO/THA Continuous Services Readiness program

• Institute for Healthcare Improvement 100,000 Lives Saved initiative

• National Quality Initiative

• Women's HeartAdvantage, a national effort to raise awareness of heart disease in women

• Covenant Health Balance Scorecard of quality indicators
• JCAHO National Patient Safety Goals
• Clinical educators on staff to provide continuing education that keep skills and competencies up-to-date

• Surgical infection prevention - improved rate of antibiotic discontinuation within 24 hours of surgery end time to help decrease the possibility of patients developing antibiotic resistance.

• Heart failure quality improvements - implemented a new discharge education sheet on heart failure to be given to patients.

• Pneumonia - instituted a protocol for giving pneumococcal vaccinations which has tremendously improved our rates.