ECRI Institute has announced that Texas Children’s Hospital in Houston is the winner of its 10th Annual Health Devices Achievement Award. According to ECRI, the award recognizes an outstanding initiative undertaken by an ECRI Institute member healthcare institution that improves patient safety, reduces costs, or otherwise facilitates better strategic management of health technology.

The winning submission, “Alarm Management Reboot,” describes Texas Children’s successful effort to improve patient safety by incorporating enterprise-wide alarm management practices to make alarms more meaningful and actionable.

Texas Children’s alarm management steering team started with a baseline analysis of its current alarm management program, and also laid out the Joint Commission’s National Patient Safety Goal into an action plan, which designated specific operations necessary to meet the phases of the patient safety goal. These simple changes soon progressed into patient-specific alarm dashboards that helped the care team make decisions around alarm settings.

According to ECRI, the project from Texas Children’s coordinated well with the timing of the Joint Commission’s 2016 National Patient Safety Goal. The judges felt the winning team did an admirable job of revamping their alarm management program with an in-depth assessment of the environment at the patient’s bedside, further noting that the actionable approach they took to stop alarm fatigue provides a good example for hospitals nationwide.

A formal award presentation will be made at Texas Children’s in spring 2016, and the hospital’s award-winning strategy will be featured in an upcoming article on ECRI Institute’s website. For more details and to learn about the four other organizations that were selected as finalists, read the news announcement on the ECRI Institute website.