Our Quality and Safety Program promotes care that is free from harm, achieves the best possible clinical results, and is delivered promptly with compassion.
Our program focuses on:
- Valuing the patient, their family and the overall experience
- Delivering the right care at the right time in the right place
- Eliminating hospital-acquired infections and preventable harm
- Promoting a culture of safety
- sing data to drive improvements in systems and processes
We foster a culture of “best practices” to ensure optimal patient care in the safest environment, using the expertise and innovative ideas of all our team members. We are continuously analyzing data and care protocols and processes to prevent and reduce infections and using new technology and ongoing education to provide the best quality care for patients.
Recent News
CAUTI Reduction
Catheter Associated Urinary Tract Infections (CAUTI) are an unfortunately common and significant healthcare associated infection. These infections are not only serious but also among the most common hospital-acquired infections. Thanks to the strong efforts of a multidisciplinary medical and nursing team, we’ve been able to ensure that best practice is reflected in our policies, nursing staff feel empowered in catheter stewardship, and staff are appropriately educated in prevention strategies. Due to these measures, we have remained CAUTI free for over a calendar year.
Preventable falls
At Penn State Health St. Joseph, patient safety is our top priority—especially when it comes to fall prevention. Over the past year, we've made fall prevention a focused effort across all units. Monthly situation, background, assessment and recommendation reviews of fall scenarios are shared in staff huddles to raise awareness and identify proactive strategies. Each unit has placed educational posters in break rooms, reinforcing the importance of frequent fall risk re-assessments and the use of fall alarms. We’ve also introduced an exciting advancement: orientation for newly hired staff now includes virtual reality fall prevention training, bringing an innovative and immersive approach to education. In the Emergency Department, fall prevention efforts have been elevated with the introduction of fall boxes securely locked in every room. During Skills Week 2025, we assessed current staff knowledge and provided targeted re-education on fall prevention best practices. These reinforced efforts have our current fall rate standing at 2.18, well below our hospital benchmark goal of 2.29.
Hand hygiene
Being fully compliant with proper hand hygiene is critically important to minimize the risk of our patients developing a health care-associated infection. Penn State Health’s goal for all its hospitals is a 90% compliance rate. Through the efforts of our infection preventionists, we’ve surpassed that goal each month this fiscal year, with an average compliance rate of 93%. This is a significant step in our journey to zero harm.