Since 2008, UVA has been included in the Mid-Atlantic Renal Coalition 5-Diamond Patient Safety program. As the region’s top patient safety honor, 5-Diamond status demonstrates our ongoing commitment to patient safety.
You can see this in everything we do:
- Nursing coverage — Additional nurses means we can spend more time with each patient and identify complications in their earliest stages. We can also coordinate better care for patients with multiple medical conditions.
- Water purity standards — We use FDA-approved water filtration systems in our dialysis machines to protect you from illness and complications. UVA exceeds national pure water standards.
- Emergency preparedness — We have backup power generators at every facility to immediately restore power at the first signs of a power outage.
- Certified technicians — Our biomedical technicians earned the Certified Dialysis Water Specialist designation. They were the first in the country to get this designation from the National Nephrology Certification Organization (NNCO).
Quality Standards
At UVA, quality and safety go hand in hand. Our commitment to quality means care that is timely, effective and patient-centered. We're constantly working to improve the quality of our care through special committees, initiatives and formal quality improvement efforts:
- Quality committees — Our quality committees include clinical team leaders as well as patient volunteers. Working side by side, we identify problems, discuss solutions and adopt new methods to improve all aspects of our program.
- Patient advisory board — We value our patients’ input in everything we do. Our patient advisory board is made up entirely of patient volunteers. We look to this group for input and suggestions on many of our quality efforts.