ChristianaCare Way Awards Recognize Teams Driving Quality, Safety Improvements
Celebrating caregivers’ collective commitment to serving neighbors with love and excellence
The John H. Ammon Medical Education Center auditorium hummed with energy on Nov. 14 as caregivers gathered to celebrate their colleagues’ dedication to health care quality improvement. It was time for the ChristianaCare Way Awards. Project posters lined the walls, and the standing-room-only crowd buzzed with anticipation as the program kicked off at ChristianaCare’s Newark campus.
For Janice Nevin, M.D., MPH, president and CEO of ChristianaCare, the Way Awards represent a hallmark of the organization’s culture. Since joining the health system in 2002 — coincidentally the inaugural year of the awards program — Nevin has witnessed how this annual tradition inspires ingenuity and recognizes the caregivers who work tirelessly to enhance the quality and safety of patient care in our communities.
“I love what this event represents — celebrating teamwork, innovation and a shared commitment to continuous improvement,” Nevin said as she opened the 2024 Way Awards ceremony.
“This is the work we do every day, and it makes me proud to lead a health system so dedicated to serving our patients with excellent, high-quality and equitable care. This event really captures what it means to serve together, with love and excellence.”
ChristianaCare is nationally recognized for high-quality, safe care and encourages a culture of continuous improvement. The ChristianaCare Way Awards program annually challenges physicians, nurses and other caregivers to identify opportunities for improvement, collaborate on solutions using the Plan-Do-Check-Act or Lean Six Sigma DMAIC models and submit storyboards to show their success.
This year, more than 60 volunteer judges across the health system selected 26 winning projects out of 68 submissions. Tim Bowers, MS, CIC, CPHQ, vice president of Clinical Effectiveness, announced the winners.
Keynote: Social Capital Is Key
Thomas Lee, M.D., chief medical officer of Press Ganey and a national leader in patient experience, emphasized the transformative power of “social capital” in his keynote address. He considers social capital—trust, relationships, and shared values—as vital to a health care organization’s success as financial or human capital.
“No one can give you trust and teamwork,” Lee said. “No financial incentive can achieve the work you’re honoring today — ambitious goals like reducing infections or improving safety.”
He highlighted the importance of fostering a culture of strong connections, respect, and accountability, which enables effective collaboration, smart decision-making, and commitment to shared goals, even under pressure.
Even small, everyday actions — like greeting colleagues by name or checking in regularly — can go a long way in fostering a culture of connection and continuous improvement, he said.
The quality improvement projects submitted to the Way Awards demonstrate ChristianaCare’s dedication to reducing errors, improving care consistency and building a robust foundation of social capital, he said. This commitment is key to becoming a high-reliability health system — where exceptional care is the standard.
Lee also encouraged the audience to recognize ChristianaCare’s broader role as an “anchor institution.” Health care organizations have an impact beyond the hospital walls, helping to strengthen community ties, promote health equity and serve as role models for collaboration.
Award Highlights
Here are a few highlights of the winning projects along with a gallery of all the winning teams:
President’s Award: “Scrub-a-Dub-Dub, the Line and the Hub: An Interdisciplinary Approach to Reducing CLABSI”
Preventing hospital-acquired infections is essential to keeping patients safe. To tackle central line-associated bloodstream infections (CLABSI) acquired in the hospital, the Transitional Medical Unit team — in their second consecutive President’s Award win — came up with an innovative rounding strategy. They created a weekly schedule that included real-time feedback during multidisciplinary rounds. To keep the learning going, the team shared their successes and lessons across consistent touchpoints.
“We are an organization of problem solvers [and] we solve problems for a simple reason: Our neighbors depend on us.” — Janice Nevin, M.D., MPH
A key focus of the effort was improving compliance with the “perfect care bundle” — a set of proven, evidence-based practices designed to reduce CLABSI risks. Care bundles combine multiple steps that are more effective together than alone, giving bedside nurses a clear, structured approach to prevent infections and ensure consistent care.
As a result of its proactive approach, the team achieved a meaningful reduction in CLABSI cases. This success highlights their commitment to patient safety and the value of teamwork and consistent, evidence-based practices.
Value Award and People’s Choice Award: “How Many Urines Had We Been Culturing? Way Too Many”
In August 2023, a multidisciplinary team introduced new guidelines to ensure urine cultures were ordered only when medically necessary. By updating the lab’s procedures, they made testing more efficient and improved patient care.
The impact was clear: The number of unnecessary urine cultures dropped significantly, while the accuracy of positive results for urinary tract infections improved. Patients benefited, medical laboratory scientists gained time to focus on higher-priority tests and the health system saw financial improvements.
Transformation Award: “Suspect Sepsis, Say Sepsis: A Systemwide Approach to Improving Sepsis”
Sepsis is a life-threatening condition caused by the body’s extreme response to infection. Despite updated guidelines and quality programs, early diagnosis and treatment remain challenging across health care.
To address this at ChristianaCare, a multidisciplinary team implemented strategies to improve sepsis identification and management. They introduced system-wide criteria for recognizing sepsis, launched an educational campaign, updated the screening tool for better documentation and developed a decision-support tool to guide treatment.
The results were significant: Sepsis detection improved considerably, keeping patients safer, and the hospital saw financial improvement.
Striving for Zero Harm
Other winning projects focused on improving patient and caregiver experience; simplifying access to health care; expanding screening for social drivers of health; and reducing health complications in home care settings, to name just a few.
At ChristianaCare, the focus on tracking and addressing harm — such as infections and falls — has led to meaningful progress. Last year, the number of patients experiencing preventable harm decreased by 14% and the harm rate fell by 9%.
Learn more about our efforts in our 2024 Quality & Safety Report.
“When I think about what it takes to be successful during this time of change, challenge and transformation in health care, I think about our caregivers,” Nevin said.
“We are an organization of problem solvers, and the teams that submitted entries to this year’s Way Awards are evidence of that. We solve problems for a simple reason: Our neighbors depend on us.”
