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After years of replacing hip bones and patellas, the UNM Hospital has finally gained recognition for its work. The Joint Commission, a not-for-profit organization that accredits and certifies more than 20,000 health care organizations and programs in the country, awarded a certification to UNMH for its hip and knee replacement programs at the end of July.
Rachel Landavazo, program director for the UNMH Total Joint Replacement Program, said the Joint Commission awarded UNMH a “disease-specific certification,” which recognizes a certain standard of care.
“It basically states that our hospital has put forth the effort and the time to make sure that all of our total joints receive a certain standard of care, a gold standard, and they’re certain it’s all evidence-based medicine,” she said. “It’s recognizing that we have excellence of care in our joints.”
Landavazo said the commission assessed UNMH on different factors such as performance improvement measures and standardized protocols. She said the certification is important because it helps to standardize care and develop patient education.
“There wasn’t a lot of patient education before we took on this endeavor, and now we offer a total joint class,” she said. “Before you come in to have your knee replaced or your hip replaced you have an education class on what to expect, what you should be doing, and then you often meet with physical therapy and occupational therapy.”
Rachael Brown, a unit-based educator at UNMH, said the class played an important role in obtaining the certification.
“I think that to be able to achieve the certification, we have to show that we’re educating the patients,” she said. “I think actually it’s the education that helps the certification.”
Brown said the classes at UNMH have “definitely” been effective in educating patients.
“The patients are much more aware of what they’re about to go through and the rehab efforts and the part that they need to take,” she said. “Working with physical therapy, how to manage their own pain — they’re learning all of that from the education class.”
Brown said the certification shows UNMH has credibility.
“It shows the public that the quality of care that we provide is justified by an outside source,” she said. “It’s not just us saying ‘We’re great, we’re qualified to take care of these patients.’ It’s the Joint Commission.”
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Landavazo said the Joint Commission also requires the hospital to select performance areas for improvement.
“That’s what the certification looks at, too,” she said. “You pick this, you think this is important, you have to explain why you think that it’s important and then you need to maintain improving it over the course of two years.”
The four areas UNMH focuses on for the certification are pain management, length of stay, education and surgical practices such as use of antibiotics, she said.
Landavazo said the hospital needs to maintain its standards and improve on its practice to keep its certification.
“TJC will come back in two years and make sure we’re maintaining everything that we claimed to maintain at the beginning and that we’re continuing to improve,” she said. “We can’t get the certification and say ‘OK, we got it, we’re done.’ … If you don’t show improvement, then you could lose the certification.”
