Patient Safety

Medical Errors, Grants, and You!

Private foundation and federal grants may seem unrelated to the care that you or your loved ones receive at Rogue Valley Medical Center or Three Rivers Community Hospital, but they can have a direct and positive impact. How so?

Let’s say that your mother is hospitalized and a nurse is about to administer her medication. This nurse is near the end of a lengthy exhausting shift and has been dealing with critically ill patients for hours. Exhaustion and stress contribute to medical errors, but this nurse has a fail-safe system to fall back on. Before giving any medications, our nurses must digitally scan a patient’s hospital wristband to ensure it is the right medication for the right patient at the right time. When she scans your mother’s band, a big red X appears on her scanner. Thanks to technology provided by a significant federal grant from the Rural Utilities Service, your mother has been spared a medical error.

This scanning system may eventually be standard, but for now, RVMC and TRCH are among the relatively few hospitals whose patients benefit from this state-of-the-art technology. Thanks to this and other grants recently awarded to Asante, you or your family:

• Can receive training and support to "live better" with chronic disease.
• Will have more resources to ensure that you receive best-practices treatment when hospitalized.
• Will enjoy the comforts of new or remodeled hospital spaces.
• May be able to leave the hospital sooner because of homecare telemonitoring.

All these and many other grant-funded benefits mean higher quality care for you and your loved ones right here in your home community---all thanks to private and federal grants that have been awarded to Asante, through the work of the Asante Foundation.