Southern Tennessee Regional Health System-Pulaski Named Duke LifePoint Quality Affiliate

Southern Tennessee Regional Health System-Pulaski (STRHS-Pulaski) today announced that it has been named a Duke LifePoint Quality Affiliate. This designation recognizes hospitals within the LifePoint Health system that have enrolled in the LifePoint National Quality Program and succeeded in transforming their culture of safety and achieving high standards of quality care, performance improvement and patient engagement.

“Quality comes first at our hospital, and earning this esteemed designation is further proof of our commitment to providing the best healthcare – and experience – for every person who walks through our doors,” said Jim Edmondson, chief executive officer of STRHS-Pulaski. “I am so proud of our team for working incredibly hard to reach this important milestone in our quality journey, and we are excited to continue improving the work we do to care for our patients during their greatest times of need.”

STRHS-Pulaski is a 95-bed facility serving people in Pulaski, Tennessee, and surrounding areas. To achieve Duke LifePoint Quality Affiliate designation, the STRHS-Pulaski team implemented a number of best practices and launched new initiatives to engage patients and families, enhance patient safety and improve quality care.

For example, the hospital team practiced the “Foundational Five” Safety Behaviors, which include conducting daily briefs, debriefs and huddles, using learning boards and introducing executive patient safety rounding. Executive patient safety rounding helps ensure that leaders at every level of the organization engage with staff, physicians, patients, and families about quality and patient safety. The hospital also implemented bedside shift reporting to help ensure clear communication, reduce the risk of errors and maintain consistency of care during shift changes. Bedside shift reporting is an effective method for transferring information from one provider to another, while also involving patients in discussions about their health, progress and treatment plan. Additionally, the team successfully reduced the number of patient readmissions to the hospital within 30 days of discharge by more than 30 percent, and established a Patient and Family Advisory Council to help further improve the patient experience at the hospital.

“The STRHS-Pulaski team has gone above and beyond to meet the requirements of the LifePoint National Quality Program, and we are delighted to officially recognize this facility as a Duke LifePoint Quality Affiliate,” said David Dill, president and chief operating officer of LifePoint Health. “The hospital takes its role in providing quality care close to home for the Pulaski community seriously, and achieving this designation is one more way it is directly advancing our mission of Making Communities Healthier.”

The LifePoint National Quality Program was created through a collaboration between LifePoint Health and Duke University Health System. When hospitals enroll in the program, they begin working with Duke and LifePoint quality coaches to evaluate and strengthen their quality programs and processes. Following an initial evaluation, the hospital creates a plan and begins to deploy changes that will help it achieve quality improvement benchmarks and establish long-term solutions to sustain its results.

In addition to evaluating common quality care and patient safety metrics, the LifePoint National Quality Program focuses on foundational elements required to sustain quality care, including committed leadership, systems to ensure continuous performance and process improvement, and a culture dedicated to safety. Duke LifePoint Quality Affiliate designation denotes those hospitals that achieve a broad range of criteria in each of these areas and demonstrate a capacity to continuously measure and improve quality and patient safety.

About Southern Tennessee Regional Health System

Part of LifePoint Health, Southern Tennessee Regional Health System (STRHS) is a regional network of hospitals and healthcare services serving the healthcare needs of communities in the southern Tennessee region with facilities in Winchester, Sewanee, Pulaski and Lawrenceburg. The system has 382 licensed beds, more than 300 affiliated physicians, 1,250 employees, and serves more than 160,000 people in rural communities in the region. STRHS-Pulaski is a 95-bed acute care facility with more than 300 employees and was recently ranked 8th nationally on Modern Healthcare’s list of Best Places to Work in Healthcare. For more information, visit http://southerntennessee.com.

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.

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