Update on California Health Facility Information

At Kaweah Health, excellence is our focus. We have a robust and active quality and safety improvement program. Our team is constantly working to identify areas to improve in an effort to achieve outstanding health outcomes. We, like all hospitals, have mandatory reporting obligations to the California Department of Public Health (CDPH) for certain events or outcomes. In each case, we immediately implement corrective actions to prevent these type of events from happening again, regardless of the CDPH findings.

As part of our commitment to transparency, we want you to know that we were recently notified by CDPH of two (2) deficiencies related to a pressure injury that we self-reported in April 2021. In this case, the patient refused to allow our staff to turn them over; the most common method to avoid pressure injuries. Unfortunately, we failed to properly document patient refusal in the medical record.

We were disappointed to learn of these deficiencies. According to Leapfrog, a nonprofit organization that evaluates hospital safety performance twice annually, we perform above the national average in the prevention of bedsores and pressure injuries. Nevertheless, we immediately developed and implemented a plan to correct the deficiencies, which CDPH has accepted. Corrective actions include:

• Re-educating all licensed nursing staff on the wound prevention policy and documentation for patient refusal.
• Monthly medical record audits of patients with pressure injuries

We are committed to providing the high quality care to our patients, our employees, our providers, and our community. We take all feedback and complaints seriously and work tirelessly to find new and better ways to improve.