The Texas Hospital Association has been selected to participate in a landmark project to dramatically reduce or eliminatecentral line-associated bloodstream infections (CLABSI) in hospital intensive care units. A central line is a catheter that is placed into a patient’s vein to administer frequent medications or fluids, or to draw blood. The line may stay in place for days or even weeks. The National Implementation of the Comprehensive Unit-Based Safety Program project (CUSP) also aims to improve the patient safety culture by 50 percent, as measured by the AHRQ Hospital Survey on Patient Safety Culture. Another goal of the project is to buildstate-level capacity to encourage adoption of innovative, evidence-based practices to improve quality and safety.
The project is a three-year initiative of the Health Research & Educational Trust (HRET) of the American Hospital Association, in partnership with the Johns Hopkins University Quality and Safety Research Group and the Michigan Health & Hospital Association’s Keystone Center for Patient Safety & Quality (Keystone Center). The project is funded by the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality, part of U.S. Department of Health & Human Services.
Learn how to apply the CUSP program and CLABSI-reduction tools.
Have access to expert facultyover the course of two years. THA and the HRET-JHU-MHA program team will work with each participating Texas hospital’s ICU to replicate the success of Michigan hospitals.
Not be charged a fee for the two-year "On the CUSP: Stop BSI" collaborative. However, teams should be prepared to participate fully in collaborative activities, including implementation of the CUSP and the CLABSI-reduction protocols, teleconferences, in-person meetings, and data collection and submission.
Johns Hopkins Case Study (Video)
Peter Pronovost, M.D., Ph.D., is the principal investigator for this national initiative and was instrumental in moving the CUSP model forward at Johns Hopkins Hospital. Watch the video below to get quick insight into Peter's vision for safety patient care in hospitals.
Weekly Immersion Calls
Weekly informational calls began Tuesday, Feb. 2 at 3– 4 p.m. Central and extended through Tuesday, March 9. To download recordings and slides from past immersion calls click here.
There will be no charge to selected hospitals for the in-service programs, including consultation and coaching by an expert faculty.
As part of the program, participating ICUs will commit to the following:
Submission of a commitment letter from the hospital CEO to the Texas Hospital Association;
Identification of a project team leader, typically a nurse manager, and a project team that includes, at a minimum:
Physician champion (10 percent effort),
Nurse manager/champion, if not the project leader (10-20 percent effort),
Data collector, and
Hospital executive champion;
Submission of baseline and monthly CLABSI data;
Sharing of Texas ICU CLABSI data among Texas collaborative participants for benchmarking purposes and to promote improvement;
Submission of a monthly one-page Team Check-up Tool (information about patient safety and teamwork);
Completion of the AHRQ culture survey, Hospital Survey on Patient Safety Culture, at program onset and approximately 18 months later, with at least a 60 percent response rate from each unit;
Team participation in two project conference callsper month (the first call is on content; the second focuses on coaching and peer learning) over the two-year period;
Team attendance at two in-state face-to-face meetings in the first year of implementation, and one in-state face-to-face meeting in the second (and last) year;
Implementation of the improvement tools that are part of the project;
Sharing of the improvement tools with collaborative hospitals; and
Holding monthly meetings of the ICU team to review data results and apply CUSP improvement tools, e.g., Learn from a Defect and review Team Checkup results.
All hospitals interested in participating should contact THA’s Starr West at either swest@tha.org or 512/465-1042. To learn more about the program, visit HRET's Web site.
