Two Missouri Hospitals Recognized for Rapid Innovation in Care Delivery and Process Improvement During COVID-19

JEFFERSON CITY, Mo. — Two Missouri health care organizations have been recognized with the Missouri Hospital Association’s Aim for Excellence Award. The award recognizes progress toward the Triple Aim — better health, improved care and lower cost. This year’s awards, announced at MHA’s 99th Annual Convention, recognize improvements undertaken to rapidly adapt to novel challenges presented by the COVID-19 pandemic.

“The movement toward improved care and better patient outcomes is hard-wired into hospitals’ cultures,” said Jon D. Doolittle, MHA President and CEO. “These practices are normally implemented as part of a larger process-driven system, including identification and adoption of evidence-based care systems. The pandemic required that hospitals adapt rapidly — to implement new systems and rethink their operational processes — to optimize their resources and improve care.”

The following hospitals were honored with the 2021 Aim for Excellence Award.

Saint Luke’s Health System — Kansas City, Mo.
Saint Luke’s COVID-19 Clinical Treatment Taskforce

Saint Luke’s Health System established a COVID-19 Clinical Treatment Taskforce to facilitate quality inpatient and outpatient care for COVID-19 patients. The taskforce empowered a multidisciplinary team of evidence-focused leaders to consistently evaluate the moving COVID-19 “treatment” target, while providing innovative electronic medical record-driven solutions to drive treatment support.

Citizens Memorial Hospital — Bolivar, Mo.
Monoclonal Antibody Infusion Workflow

Identifying patients eligible for monoclonal antibody treatments, and providing that care, was a central strategy to reduce the need for hospitalization and improve outcomes. Citizens Memorial Hospital created a reporting tool to identify COVID-19-positive patients eligible for infusion, implemented an evidence-based scoring matrix to determine a patient’s hospitalization risk and opened a dedicated infusion space for these patients.

The Missouri Hospital Association is a not-for-profit association in Jefferson City that represents 141 Missouri hospitals. In addition to representation and advocacy on behalf of its membership, the association offers continuing education programs on current health care topics and seeks to educate the public about health care issues.

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