Colorado 5 Million Lives Campaign
The Colorado 5 Million Lives Campaign helped hospitals adopt up to 12 interventions to improve care, including rapid response at the first sign of patient decline, making certain that patients receive the right medications at every care transfer point, adherence to best practices known to prevent heart attacks and ventilator-associated pneumonia, reduction of infections and drug-resistant staph, reduction of pressure ulcers and engaging hospital leadership in patient safety efforts.
To help implement the interventions, the Colorado Foundation for Medical Care—the state’s health care quality improvement organization—developed educational events and provided other assistance to participating hospitals. As components of this technical assistance, the Colorado Rural Health Center worked with participating rural hospitals to address patient safety issues, and the Denver-based communications firm SE2 helped hospitals to develop communications that support the sustainability of interventions among staff and patients. Additionally, the Colorado Hospital Association worked with participating hospitals’ CEOs and boards to provide related professional development and leadership training.
Given that the fastest growing demand for technology simulation learning is driven by health care quality improvement efforts, The Trust also awarded a grant to the Colorado Department of Labor and Employment—which founded the Work, Education and Lifelong Learning Simulation (WELLS) Center—to support the development of simulation scenarios that help health care providers to build clinical knowledge and skills in any medical situation. The WELLS Center is the first training facility in the country to integrate the use of the Virtual Human Dissector and datacasting with human patient mannequins.
