A pressure ulcer is a serious breakdown of the skin. Factors such as older age, poor circulation, lack of mobility, friction and malnutrition significantly contribute to the risk of developing pressure ulcers. The patients treated at RML Specialty Hospital are seriously ill, and are at very high risk for developing pressure ulcers while hospitalized. Many of our patients are admitted with pressure ulcers that occurred in their prior setting of care.
Pressure ulcers are painful, take a long time to heal, and cause other complications such as skin and bone infections. Our goal is to employ forefront strategies to improve pressure ulcers patients already have at admission and prevent new ones from developing.
RML uses the Hill Rom Pressure Ulcer Prevalence Survey, which is the nationally recognized benchmark for measuring the frequency of acute care hospital-acquired pressure ulcers. More than 700 facilities participate in creating this database against which we can compare our rates. The definition is the percentage of inpatients present upon the day of sampling who have hospital-acquired pressure ulcers excluding stage one, or minor, ulcers. Lower rates reflect fewer ulcers.
As the chart below shows, RML’s rate of pressure ulcers for fiscal year 2007 was 1.8, or half the nationally reported 3.7 rate for acute-care hospitals.
Because of our outstanding results, RML received a clinical excellence award from the National Association of Long-Term Hospitals (NALTH) in 2005.
