Today I located some wonderful references. First of all, a 2008 paper by Amit Gefen, PhD, finds that a pressure ulcer can be initiated in as short a time as one hour. This provides support to the essential element of the NDF Prevention Protocol that the at-risk patient must be placed on a pressure reducing surface immediately.
The Institute for Healthcare Improvement (IHI.org) under their Programs section has a listing of hospitals that have made significant reductions in hospital-caused PU incidence, and that are willing to serve as mentors to other hospitals. All of them list new support surfaces as an essential element. I plan to ask each which support surface they procured.
Tuesday, January 25, 2011
Monday, January 17, 2011
Most Hopeful Development
The most hopeful development since the "never event" finding by Medicare has been the New Jersey law requiring all nursing homes to replace all beds with pressure redistribution mattresses. Our focus for the foreseeable future should be on educating the other 49 states about what New Jersey has done and asking, "why don't you take the steps needed to stop allowing bedsores?"
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