Top Gun Hospital Program Brings New Meaning to the Phrase "Frequent Flyer"

Provena Health hospitals are learning 'top flight' maneuvers from LifeWings Partners LLC, headed by former TopGun instructor Stephen Harden.

Click here to read coverage by Leslie Mann for the Chicago Tribune.

The 3 year old company is building an impressive roster - they've already worked with 75 H/HC facilities.

Provena service line administrator Joan Cappelletti says the LifeWings method is useful "when her department has shift changes or when a patient is moved from one area to another, such as from an operating to a recovery room."

LifeWings' website claims use of the system can help hospitals realize a host of benefits:

• Total elimination of wrong surgeries

• Statistically significant improvement in attitudes of care givers toward using teamwork and communication to provide better care¹

• 75% improvement in pre-procedure antibiotic administration

• 50% improvement in observed to expected mortality ratios

• 40% decrease in Class 1 surgical infections

• 57% improvement in observed to expected mortality with patients with risk of mortality of less than 10%

• Improvement in employee satisfaction

• 50.1% reduction in surgical counts errors²

• 51% improvement in OR turnaround times

• Reduction in nurse turnover to less than 2%

• Reduction in nurse-physician occurrence reports

• Improvement in patient satisfaction survey results

• Improvement in adherence to diabetes treatment protocols and clinically significant improvements in patient outcomes³

• Decrease of patient visit time by 10 minutes³

• Reduction in time-to-train for new hire employees³

• Approximately 50% decrease in open claims files for potentially compensable events

Here's some more info on reducing wrong-site surgeries.

The given figures for reducing nursing staff turnover are even more incredible - ICU turnovers reduced by 23 and 35 percent?

Where can I see these guys in action?!