Three New Mexico hospitals earned the Quest for Excellence Award, the New Mexico Hospital Association’s (NMHA’s) premier honor for advancing patient safety, performance improvement and quality. Lincoln County Medical Center in Ruidoso, N.M. received the top overall award with Las Cruces, N.M.’s hospitals MountainView Regional Medical Center being named the large hospital award winner, and Rehabilitation Hospital of Southern New Mexico the specialty hospital winner.

Each of the honorees enlisted multiple clinical and administrative teams and approaches to address challenges unique to their hospital. Lincoln County Medical Center was chosen to receive the top award by a national panel of judges from four other state hospital associations. The awards were presented in a ceremony at the 74th Annual Meeting of the NMHA in Albuquerque.

Lincoln County Medical Center reduced the hospital’s readmission rate to an exceptional 2.4 percent, well below the national average of over 11 percent. The hospital implemented a new case management processes in their emergency department and coordinated post-discharge home visits with local emergency medical services. Lincoln County Medical Center staff also made concerted efforts to engage patients and their families with every visit to ensure all social factors such as access to transportation to follow-up appointments, were considered and addressed.

MountainView Regional Medical Center used nationally recognized patient quality metrics and a team huddles approach to reduce by 65 percent the occurrence of adverse patient events such as those that may occur during a hospital stay, after operations or procedures, and childbirth. Team huddles allowed for more timely treatment and analysis of high-risk situations and improved the accuracy of clinical documentation and billing.

Rehabilitation Hospital of Southern New Mexico’s project successfully reintegrated spinal cord injury patients into the community seeing an over 20 percent improvement in patients being successfully discharged without readmission to the hospital. The hospital implemented the highest, evidence-based clinical practice guidelines, revamped their interdisciplinary teams, and improved care planning and patient and family engagement efforts including carrying out a 30-day post-discharge transition into the community program.

Quest for Excellence award honorable mentions included:

• Nor-Lea Hospital District (Lovington) – Emergency supply room standardization
• Roosevelt General Hospital (Portales) – Improving emergency department utilizations
• Lovelace Women’s Hospital (Albuquerque) – Journey to Zero hospital acquired infections
• Rehoboth McKinley Christian Health Care (Gallup) - Pertussis outbreak response

“Commitment to quality and patient safety is central to the mission of NMHA member hospitals,” said Jeff Dye, NMHA president and CEO. “These hospitals’ comprehensive plans, put into action, have made them leaders in the state and nation in fostering patient safety and quality,”

For more on strides New Mexico hospitals have made in advancing quality and patient safety in their communities, listen to the NMHA Advancing Quality & Patient Safety Podcast at https://anchor.fm/nmha. Podcast guests include healthcare and clinical experts across our state.