Christiana Sciaudone

Staff Writer

December 1, 2004

STAMFORD -- Stamford Hospital won a national award from the Joint Commission on Accreditation of Healthcare Organizations for its treatment of critically ill patients.

The eighth annual Ernest A. Codman Award will be given to the hospital this week for creating a protocol to maintain proper blood glucose levels in critically ill patients that reduced death rates and the length of stays in the intensive care unit.

"We are proud that the joint commission has chosen to recognize the life-saving glucose management protocol developed by our critical care unit team," said Brian Grissler, president and chief executive officer of Stamford Hospital. "This is an effective intervention that can profoundly affect patient outcomes."

As a result of the new regimen, death rates were reduced by 29 percent and the length of stay in the ICU decreased by nearly 11 percent, according to the joint commission.

The hospital will receive the award tomorrow at the Joint Commission on Accreditation of Healthcare Organizations and Joint Commission Resources' National Conference on Quality and Patient Safety in Health Care conference in Chicago.

"We applaud the winners of the 2004 Codman Awards for achieving improvements that are measurably advancing health care," said Dr. Dennis S. O'Leary, president of the joint commission. "These leaders are truly the vanguard of raising the bar for health-care quality."

The joint commission, an independent not-for-profit organization, evaluates and accredits more than 15,000 health-care organizations and programs in the United States.

A panel of national experts in quality measurement and improvement selected the recipients of the 2004 awards.

Other winners include Medco Health Solutions in Franklin Lakes, N.J., and Staten Island University Hospital in Staten Island, N.Y.

Copyright © 2004, Southern Connecticut Newspapers, Inc.