Dear Friends and Colleagues:

Crozer-Keystone Health System (CKHS) is pleased to present the Fifth Annual Report on Quality. The report highlights the health system’s ongoing quality initiatives, the specific strides we have made in fiscal year 2002, and our future goals and challenges.

Crozer-Keystone has a longstanding commitment to provide high-quality health care to the patients and families of our community. Quality is embedded in the culture of Crozer-Keystone Health System and permeates every program and service that it provides. CKHS, its physicians and employees have developed strong structures and programs to make quality improvement a central part of the organization and ensure that it underscores every facet of their work.

As this report demonstrates, Crozer-Keystone’s quality initiatives are focused and forward-looking. For example, the health system focuses keenly on patient safety and has developed targeted strategies to reduce errors, enhance our workforce, and improve patient outcomes by utilizing best medical practices. These strategies are in keeping with our mission to create healthier families in Delaware County and are consistent with major regional and national efforts to address patient safety.

Patient safety – and medication safety in particular – has become a prominent issue in the legislature, medical literature, and media and on the agendas of leading medical associations including the Institute of Medicine, the Voluntary Hospitals of America (VHA Inc.), and the Hospital and Healthsystem Association of Pennsylvania (HAP). In March, the Medical Care Availability and Reduction of Error Act (Pennsylvania Act 13) – which begins to address the complex and difficult issue of medical professional liability reform – devotes an entire set of regulations to patient safety and the reduction of medical errors.

Collaboration and information-sharing among health organizations is crucial in the quest for high-quality health care. As you will read throughout this report, Crozer-Keystone fosters partnerships with health care, civic, and educational institutions across the region and nation, from Widener University to the Delaware Valley Healthcare Council (DVHC) and HAP to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.

There is no greater example of successful collaboration than our extensive network of  interdisciplinary community health programs. Crozer-Keystone partners with the City of Chester, the Chester Upland School District, ChesPenn Health Services, and scores of other organizations to provide vital health and human services to the community. The health system’s multi-year commitment to community health – and specifically the collaborative programs that are provided in Chester – was rewarded this year with the prestigious NOVA Award. CKHS was one of five national winners of the award, given annually by the American Hospital Association(AHA).

For more than a decade, we have utilized the Healthy People goals as our target in community health and have measured our progress through a biannual community survey. We have used this information to develop specific strategies to enhance people’s health. As you will read in this report, Crozer-Keystone has programs in place to improve minority health, women’s heart health, birth outcomes, the health of children with asthma, and those with osteoporosis, among others. All of these programs require clinical quality and unrelenting dedication and teamwork.

Part of Crozer-Keystone’s current and past success hinges on its commitment to search for excellence based on the latest and most rigorous scientific data. As previewed in last year’s quality report, the system has established a first-rate evidence-based medicine (EBM) program and task force which reviews the medical literature to ascertain – and then incorporate systemwide – the latest and most effective techniques for treating the diseases and conditions that affect our patients and community. Guided by nationally renowned sources such as the New England Journal of Medicine and the Journal of the American Medical Association, CKHS has adopted so-called "best practices" to treat acute myocardial infarction (heart attack), community-acquired pneumonia, and high cholesterol. The EBM program is also expanding its focus to include the prevention of surgical-site infections, the treatment of stroke, and several other projects described in this report.

These and many other quality achievements were highlighted at CKHS’s annual Quality of Care retreat, held in May. The retreat featured a review of Crozer-Keystone’s progress in evidence-based medicine and community health, as well as a preview of future quality goals, which are discussed in Section VI of this report.

We encourage you to review the Fifth Annual Report on Quality in its entirety so that you can become familiar with the impressive and exciting activities that are taking place at Crozer-Keystone Health System. And, as we look back on the year’s achievements in quality, we would like to thank our staff and health care providers for their ongoing commitment to service excellence and their efforts to improve quality of life in Delaware County. At the same time, we must also look ahead to our future goals and realize that no matter how well we are doing, there is always room for quality improvement.

Gerald Miller
President and Chief Executive Officer
Crozer-Keystone Health System

Joan K. Richards
Chief Operating Officer
Crozer-Keystone Health System
President, Crozer-Keystone Hospitals

Joseph R. Stock, M.D.
Chairman, Quality of Care Committee
Crozer-Keystone Health System