Outcomes Validate Quality Care – 2012 Results
“New Hope… Our Name, Our Promise.”
Our vision is concise and elegant, and encompasses our company’s mission: to provide care, healing, and new hope to children and their families whose lives are burdened by psychological and psychiatric illness. It’s easy to say and describe, but much more difficult to prove. How do we know that we are providing quality care to children and changing lives?
An important part of performance improvement is collecting data relative to practice goals we want to achieve. If we collect and measure the data the same way on a routine basis, we can trend our results to determine if we are improving or need work in a certain area. At New Hope, we determine which practice areas merit special focus, set goals for these areas, and monitor our data relating to these on a monthly, quarterly, and yearly basis. In this way, we can quantitatively measure our progress in treating our consumers, so we can determine whether or not we are actually providing quality care.
I’m happy to report that New Hope Carolinas demonstrated very positive trends in 2012. Our physical restraint rates (number of restraints/patient days x 1000) showed a consistent decline throughout the course of the year. Our final restraint rate for 2012 was less than half what it was in 2011, which indicates our staff were more skilled at employing therapeutic strategies to address crisis states… and it worked. We saw fewer critical incidents as 2012 progressed, and required fewer emergency medications, while maintaining a safe and therapeutic residential milieu.
Ultimately, we want to see that our consumers leave New Hope with changed lives. All consumers who complete treatment are given the opportunity to participate in a survey after discharge. Post-discharge survey results demonstrated that 70% of those consumers surveyed reported absence of problem or criminal behaviors, 87% of those surveyed reported regular school attendance or successful graduation from school, and 87% of those surveyed would recommend New Hope’s services to others.
Data collection and interpretation is important in monitoring our quality of care and ensuring we keep our promise of providing effective treatment to our consumers and their families. For more details, access our Outcomes Summary Report from the carousel on the home page.
