par.a.gon [par-uh-gon, guh n] - noun  
a model or pattern of excellence or of a particular excellence.

WE COACH - YOU TRANSFORM - PATIENTS IMPROVE

View the Paragon brochure

Hospitals Contact:                  Lori Harmon, Paragon Program Manager
                                            +1-847-493-6403, lharmon@sccm.org  

Industry Sponsors Contact:     Jim Flanigan, Director Marketing
                                            +1-847-827-7282, jflanigan@sccm.org

                                            Desiree Ng, Industrial Relations Manager
                                           +1-847-827-7188, dng@sccm.org     

Paragon Delivers

- Expert critical care QI leaders with an outside view and perspective;
- Multiprofessional focus and coaches;
- A custom program with additional benefit of collaborative learning networks;
- Return on investment within six months to one year; and
- A program that will change the way the team works and improve the way care is delivered.
   
Background      
              
The Society of Critical Care Medicine (SCCM) maintains that the best way to improve staff satisfaction, enhance patient outcomes, and boost the financial performance of hospitals is to deliver Right Care, Right Now™. Efficient, safe patient-centered care can be achieved by establishing a standardized ICU structure of integrated multi-professional teams led by a trained and present intensivist. These high performance teams work together as a single, cohesive group with an orientation toward clinical excellence ultimately achieving optimal patient outcomes. Improving the hospital ICU is:

• Good for physicians and staff
• Better for hospitals
• Best for patients

Changing ICU structures can be challenging but even small changes, seemingly simple steps, can make a large difference in experiences and outcomes for patients and their families. Going from good to better, from better to best and crossing the bridge to excellence is a process. 

Since many ICUs have similar barriers and opportunities, working collaboratively with external peers in consultations across disciplines can be very beneficial. Exploring change strategies and discovering how colleagues across the country have improved reliability and embedded best practice into their critical care units is valuable. The time is now and the need for change is urgent. Ask:

- Does our unit treat hospital acquired infections as serious events?
- Do we have an effective plan in place to assess the event and change the prevention systems?
- Do we collect data just to collect it? What do we do with it that has meaning to our patients?
- Have we developed harm prevention measures that are being tracked and engaged on every patient, every time?
- Do we know the benchmarks for various bundles and how our hospital measures up?
- Have we integrated the ACCM end-of-life care guidelines and the Clinical practice guidelines for support of the family in the patient-centered intensive care unit into our clinical practice? 
- Do we round as a multiprofessional team daily using a communication tool to assure that we are in full possession of the facts and do we set goals with the patient at the center of the plan?
- Are our hand-offs efficient and accurate?
- Do we understand quality improvement methods and use them to improve our practice in the unit?
- Are we a team or a group of individuals working independently?

These are important questions but it is only a short list. Up to 30% of acute care hospital costs are generated by patients in intensive care units while they occupy only 10% of the beds. Units that induce harm unintentionally due to a lack of reliability lose staff, are expensive to operate and most importantly do not meet their obligation to the patients and families that depend on them for care. To address these and other issues, SCCM has developed an innovative ground-breaking program to assist critical care leadership in maximizing teamwork, improving staff satisfaction, reducing costs and streamlining care delivery. This unique program is positioned to organize a community of purpose around the strategic conversion of ideas into action.

Paragon Critical Care Quality Implementation Program™ (Paragon) offers hospitals a unparalleled opportunity to benefit from the experiences of peer leaders dedicated to critical care performance improvement. Engaging tools provided by SCCM and others, Paragon Critical Care utilizes a combination of self-assessment, teleconferences, site visits, peer collaboration, consulting and coaching. Movement toward the more ideal multi-professional model with the support systems to assist hospital leadership teams in transforming targeted areas of clinical practice or operations within individual hospital ICUs is Paragon's goal. Since performance improvement work requires time, dedication and resources Paragon coaches provide the necessary support for action plan development and to keep the ICU team on track.

The Paragon process requires a motivated critical care team and hospital administration to work together with SCCM expert members identifying performance gaps, exploring pathways for success, and changing the reliability of processes within the critical care micro-system of the hospital. While performance improvement never ends, Paragon coaches provide that jumpstart the team needs to begin an ascent to excellence. Presently completing the pilot phase in the United States, hospitals located in Alaska, Florida, Virginia, Michigan, and North Carolina have become Paragon partners. The Society is working with each hospital's multi-professional ICU team to assist in projects ranging from:

• Reduction in hospital-acquired infections (click here to view the Institute for Healthcare Improvement's central line and VAP bundles and listen to this short podcast from AHRQ)
• Launching a rapid response system to rescue patients sooner creating an ICU without walls
• Critical care communications: hand-offs, rounds, goal sheets and teamwork to enhance safety and reduce costs
• Assistance with implementation of the Surviving Sepsis Campaign bundles and performance improvement program utilizing a guidelines driven process including data collection and analysis
• Protocol development and implementation using evidence based medicine as a tool for more reliable care 

Additional Paragon focuses involve addition of palliative and pastoral staff in multi-professional critical care rounds, policy changes to enhance family involvement in the critical care unit and critical care dashboard formulation/reporting. The improvement projects undertaken are based on each unique critical care unit's specific needs identified via the self-assessment and site visit processes. Interventions vary widely, but in all cases a team of highly experienced dedicated mentors are available for guidance and support.

Hospitals interested in contracting with SCCM to become a Paragon participant to transform their critical care unit to one that:

• Acknowledges the high-risk, error prone nature of critical care
• Is blame-free and focuses on reporting of errors and close calls as an opportunity to improve the system that caused the failure
• Nurtures collaboration across the multiprofessional team
• Sees care though the eyes of the patient and family

should contact Lori Harmon, RRT, MBA, Paragon Critical Care Manager, at +1-847-493-6403 or via email at lharmon@sccm.org. 

Additional SCCM Resources:

• ICU REPORT & Index assessment tool
• SCCM guidelines
• Learn ICU quality & safety information
• Right Care, Right Now™ series of Vodcasts