Baptist Memorial Health Care - Arjo MOVE® Program

Baptist Memorial Health Care is one of the largest non-profit health care systems in the country. This award-winning network of 20 hospitals, specialty facilities and clinics is dedicated to providing compassionate, high-quality care for its patients. Thanks to Arjo MOVE, Baptist Memorial has shown that it is compassionate about their nurses as well. The group had a vision of offering a safer work environment for their staff.

Baptist Memorial recognized an opportunity to make improvements for its patients and employees by reducing injuries and injury-related costs. After research and a thorough process to examine the many options, Baptist Memorial selected Arjo for its proven results and broad range of support solutions. With Arjo MOVE, the staff now is able to safely transfer and assist patients without manual lifting.

“Our commitment to partner with Arjo and to implement a formal patient handling program is critical to reducing employee injuries and improving patient safety. To illustrate the importance of this program, results are reported to the executive team on a weekly basis.”

Nick Lewis
System Director of Employee Safety, Security, Environmental Programing, Occupational

Care Bio

Baptist Memorial Health Care is a large system of 20 hospitals and facilities with 22,000 employees in Tennessee, Arkansas and Mississippi. The hospitals range from a large 642-bed hospital to small critical access hospitals with 25 beds. They are located in large metropolitan areas to rural hospitals, and every place in between.

The Challenge

Injury reports for the hospitals pointed to two areas of concern: employee injuries related directly to patient handling, and nurses who were unable to return to work after having devastating injuries. The cost of injuries, workman’s compensation, and lost time on the job was costing the system hundreds of thousands of dollars per year. In 2014, Baptist Memorial experienced 58 work-related injuries. In an effort to improve conditions, Baptist Memorial enlisted Arjo’s MOVE team to find a lasting solution.

The Solution

In 2014, Baptist Memorial and Arjo began implementing the safe patient handling and mobility program, which included training, support and clinical consulting.

“We didn’t want to purchase equipment and say here you go, use it,” said Nick Lewis. “We wanted to make an investment not only in equipment, but also in our staff. It was important for us to create a culture of safe patient handling. Arjo presented a standardized, formal process and best practices that they developed over years.”

Arjo leadership engaged Arjo MOVE clinical consultants to perform process mapping, program development and deployment for each facility. Process mapping involves gathering information within the hospital framework along with subject matter experts to determine who would interact with the equipment. Each hospital was different with varying capabilities, so this was taken into consideration for every program and training plan.

For the leaders of this initiative, it was important to them not to push a program on their employees. “We were facilitating the development of the programs specific to their hospital,” Lewis said. “We didn’t just hand them a playbook that was standard for every hospital. They each had their own playbook.”

Comprehensive Clinical Services provided:

• Assessment, Communication & EMR
• Transfer Mobility Coaches/Unit Peer Leaders
• Comprehensive Incident/Injury Investigation
• Meaningful & Purposeful Rounding
• Strong Safe Patient Handling & Mobility Messaging
• Measure Outcomes
• Support & Accountability at all levels

Training

The initial training period was a team effort. The Baptist Memorial transfer mobility coaches (TMCs) from each area, along with the Arjo clinical consultants, trained the end users. They hosted safe patient-handling events to provide the staff with hands-on experience with the equipment.

Moving forward, new employees are trained on the equipment as part of the onboarding and orientation process. Nurses are trained to do lifts and transfers with the equipment before they use it on a patient. A peer coach signs off on the process and each year validates the skills to hold clinicians accountable.

The Outcome

So far, Baptist has seen an 80 percent reduction in patient-handling injuries across all the hospitals in the program. In the largest facility, their three-year baseline was an average of 58 employee injuries related to patient handling per year. In 2017, the program brought that number down to 10 patient-handling related injuries.

The secondary benefit of lower staff injuries is fewer incidents where the patient may be injured as well. When a nurse moves a patient and gets hurt, they may let go or inadvertently harm the patient. The incidence of patient harm has gone down.

“There may be patient apprehension at first because some of the equipment is big and it can be intimidating to look at. But once it’s utilized appropriately, it creates an incredible level of comfort for the patient and their family members,” said Lewis.

Baptist Memorial launched the patient handling programs in 11 of their hospitals. With the success so far, 2 more hospitals are planning to implement the program.

“As a clinician, I’ve seen other programs where we bought nice pieces of equipment, but without real focus. The education, training and acceptance is what makes this program successful,” said Tom Kurlick.

Benefits

Beyond the initial benefit of reduced injuries, there are additional benefits to the program.

“Transforming the culture to focus on safe patient handling and mobility resulted in a multi-faceted, positive impact on outcomes. From the beginning of the program, we measured patient handling injuries as well as mobility-related events such as HAPI, Falls, VAP, DVT/VTE and PHI-related litigation. We found a positive correlation between improved safe patient handling and mobility culture and mobility-related outcomes. For example, all hospitals are experiencing decreases in PHIs, HAPIs, Falls, etc.,” said Lewis.

The cost savings stems from a reduction in costly insurance claims due to employee injuries.

When compared to numbers before the patient handling program, Baptist Memorial saw a savings of $4.2 million over 5 years.

According to Lewis and Kurlick, the program and the partnership is well worth the investment.

“Arjo has shown us the professionalism, partnership, engagement and commitment that makes them a top performer,” said Lewis. “We partner with many, many vendors, providers and consultants. I would unequivocally say that our successes with the program would not have been realized if we didn’t have a great strategic partner like Arjo. They perform, they meet our expectations, and they continue to deliver that excellent service that we in turn deliver to our patients and our staff,” said Lewis.

“When we can keep a nurse or caregiver healthy and working 10 years longer because they’ve avoided a career-ending injury related to patient handling, then that’s the biggest win,” said Kurlick.

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