Excellence in Care

Catholic Health strives to provide patients with excellence in care. Our Just Culture, GNOSIS, and Zero Harm initiatives aim to offer high-quality health care in a safe environment.

Catholic Health is fostering a fair and just culture that encourages reporting errors and events. In doing so, safety issues can be quickly identified.

Our Initiatives

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Just Culture is defined as a culture in which front-line staff and others are not punished for actions, errors or decisions taken by them consistent with their experience and training. However, gross negligence, willful violations and destructive acts are not tolerated.

Just Culture is an important part of Catholic Health's High Reliability Journey, which balances the need for an open and honest reporting setting and leads to a quality learning environment. To accomplish this, Catholic Health focuses on system design and management of the behavioral choices of all employees as opposed to errors and outcomes.

Our staff is committed to making safety a necessity for safe patient care by following our Daily Patient Safety Principles to identify and fix safety causes of care by learning from these events.

right balance graph

As part of our commitment to High Reliability, and assisting our providers in maintaining the highest levels of clinical proficiency in their respective fields, we are requiring our emergency department and obstetrical providers to participate in the GNOSIS program.

GNOSIS is a patient safety and risk management strategic program designed to advance clinical competency in knowledge and judgment in high risk practice areas, including communication, abdominal pain, and chest pain obstetrical safety. This program supports the ability of the care teams to provide safe and effective care.

Through an ability assessment, GNOSIS will:

  • Identify opportunities for improvements in both clinical knowledge and application of judgment

Courseware includes the following modules:

I. Effective communication in the ED
II. High risk chest pain in the ED
III. Diagnosis of acute abdominal pain in the ED
IV. Emergency Severity Index (ESI) triage
V. Fetal assessment and monitoring
VI. Shoulder abnormality
VII. Obstetric hemorrhage
VIII. Hypertensive disorders in pregnancy

With a strong focus on clinical excellence and safety, Catholic Health's Zero Harm Campaign continues to drive improved patient care. Dr. Patrick M. O’Shaughnessy, Catholic Health President and CEO, presents the Certified Zero Harm Award to care teams from across the system who have achieved and sustained flawless performance.

“This recognition underscores the powerful message of Zero Harm,” said Dr. O’Shaughnessy. “We are determined to consistently deliver the highest quality results and best outcomes for our patients.”

Zero Harm Awards Recognize Exceptional Care

The following entities earned awards for 12 consecutive months of successfully attaining zero incidence of harm for designated measures:

  • Restraints – Step Down Units
  • Central Line-Associated Bloodstream Infections (CLABSI)—Rehab
  • Knee Procedure Surgical Site Infection (4Q19-3Q20)
  • Hysterectomy Procedure Surgical Site Infection (4Q19-3Q20)
  • Catheter-Associated Urinary Tract Infection—Rehab
  • Central Line-Associated Bloodstream Infections (CLABSI)—Rehab
  • Methicillin-Resistant Staphylococcus Aureus (MRSA)—Rehab
  • Colon Procedure Surgical Site Infection (4Q19-3Q20)
  • Spinal Procedure Surgical Site Infection (4Q19-3Q20)
  • Knee Procedure Surgical Site Infection (4Q19-3Q20)
  • Hip Procedure Surgical Site Infection (4Q19-3Q20)
  • Knee Procedure Surgical Site Infection (4Q19-3Q20)
  • Hysterectomy Procedure Surgical Site Infection (4Q19-3Q20)
  • Restraints—Medical/Surgical Unit
  • Hysterectomy Procedure Surgical Site Infection (4Q19-3Q20)
  • Restraints—Med/Surg & Step Down Units
  • CAUTI
  • Central Line-Associated Bloodstream Infections (CLABSI)
  • Colon Procedure Surgical Site Infection (4Q19-3Q20)
  • Spinal Procedure Surgical Site Infection (4Q19-3Q20)
  • Hip Procedure Surgical Site Infection (4Q19-3Q20)
  • Knee Procedure Surgical Site Infection (4Q19-3Q20)
  • Central Line-Associated Bloodstream Infections (CLABSI)
  • Central Line-Associated Bloodstream Infections (CLABSI)
  • Central Line-Associated Bloodstream Infections (CLABSI)
  • Percent of Pressure Injury Worsened in Long Term Population
  • Central Line-Associated Bloodstream Infections (CLABSI)

Error Prevention Training classes are one of the ways Catholic Health provides education for staff on our High Reliability journey. The goal of the class is to learn the principles of reducing preventable harm to patients and employees by learning how errors occur and events happen. The focus is to apply Catholic Health safety principles that support error prevention and to learn how to apply these principles to prevent errors.

Since 2016, Catholic Health has trained over 16,500 staff members and more than 3,000 Physicians and Advance Practice Providers. Catholic Health continues to train all new members of the medical staff as it is a required component for them to practice at each of our Catholic Health facilities.

View Daily Safety Principles