Catawba Valley Medical Center (CVMC) nurse Amber Hice already had a string
of acronyms behind her own name when she decided to jump on an opportunity
and help the hospital navigate the process of getting heart failure accredited
by the Society of Cardiovascular Patient Care (SCPC). Much more than alphabet
soup, SCPC is an accrediting body that signifies a hospital’s strict
commitment to providing improved care for a very sick segment of people
– those with heart failure.
“The SCPC motto is to ‘bring science to the bedside’,”
said Amber. “I love it! It’s all about providing a standard
of care that incorporates best practices.” Amber started by learning
about the background and science of heart failure; she learned that the
opportunity accreditation provides is an enormous step towards offering
better patient care.
Using improved processes, procedures and best practices for the specialized
care heart failure patients need, not only helps patients – it also
helps reduce the financial burden heart failure places on patients and
hospitals alike. According to the SCPC, heart failure is the number one
reason for hospitalization in all patients aged 65 years and older. What’s
more, readmissions are common and costly for both heart failure patients
and hospitals now being penalized by new regulations based on excessive
readmissions.
Sara Paul, RN, DNP, FNP with
Catawba Valley Cardiology worked with Amber during the process and, to their delight, they learned
that most of what was required was already in practice at CVMC. They just
needed to create more formal documentation around the processes already
in place. Knowing this, Amber became a primary champion of the cause.
“Heart failure is a chronic progressive disease, so it is never cured,
but we have learned numerous ways to improve quality of life and prevent
hospital readmissions as much as possible,” said Paul. “For
example, as part of the accreditation process, Amber had to cull through
data points of 30 heart failure patients and send SCPC the data. Once
that initial data was submitted, she sat down with CVMC Project Coordinator,
Ginger Biggerstaff to create a detailed project with timelines and targeted
areas for improvement. We assembled a team, [see sidebar for list of team
members] built action plans, set milestones and initiated a gap analysis
to identify opportunities. Then, after the one year process and a visit
from accreditation surveyors, we received news from SCPC that we had achieved
accreditation!”
During her 7 years working at CVMC, Amber has demonstrated a commendable
pursuit of advanced degrees and higher education in nursing related to
heart failure patients. As a registered nurse (RN), she returned to school
to obtain her bachelor’s degree (BSN) and continued studying to
acquire a credential in progressive care (PCCN) and cardiac medicine (CMC)
credentialing from the American Nurses Credentialing Center (ANCC). Now
it looks as if Amber’s dedication will help patients beyond the
reach of CVMC. She says that SCPC constituents have been impressed with
the value of a clinical tool that CVMC created in-house, and they are
considering adopting it and recommending it as a best practice. The tool,
called the subjective activity tolerance tool, is a metric that helps
assign a value to help assess a patient’s likelihood to comply with
order sets based on whether or not they fatigue easily or present various
energy levels.