The Miriam Hospital Care Delivery System

Our Care Delivery System

Our care delivery system encompasses the settings in which we practice, the manner of delivery, skills required and anticipated outcomes of care. The foundation of the delivery of care is the primacy of relationships.

Practice Settings

Our inpatient units include critical and intermediate care units and general medical-surgical units. Units receive patients with a full range of diagnoses, although expertise in caring for specific patient populations is concentrated on different units. Specialty populations include those needing total joint replacement, cancer care, cardiovascular medical management and intervention, bariatric care, and stroke care.

Specialty units include the inpatient and ambulatory operating rooms, post-anesthesia care units, procedural care unit and dialysis unit.

The emergency department sees more than 75,000 patients a year and recently opened a clinical decision unit for short-stay observation.

Ambulatory practice areas include the Lifespan Cancer Institute, the Center for Cardiac Fitness, our new Ostomy Center, multiple specialty clinics, the Women’s Medicine Collaborative, the TB clinic, and endoscopic, cardiac diagnostic and interventional services.

Skilled and Expert Nurses

The Miriam Hospital has a professional nurse workforce with 93 percent of nurses prepared at the baccalaureate level or higher, meeting the Institute of Medicine Future of Nursing recommendation. Forty-five percent of our nurses hold specialty certification, affirming their advanced knowledge, skill, and practice. Baccalaureate-educated and certified nurses have been shown to contribute to better patient outcomes.

Provision of geriatric nursing throughout the organization is part of the care delivery system. Nurses throughout the hospital have gerontological nursing certification, including clinical nurses, Clinical Development Specialists, Advanced Practice Managers, Directors, Supervisors, and Advanced Practice RNs (APRNs). Geriatric nursing care is supported through consultation with these nursing and other geriatric experts and The Miriam Hospital nurse-developed GENESIS program.

Focus on Quality Outcomes

At all levels — patient, unit, department, and organization — Miriam Hospital nurses focus on improving the care delivery system to achieve quality outcomes.

Our nurses:

• create partnerships with patients and families to establish goals and plans for delivery of patient-centered care
• are involved in interprofessional collaborative practice to ensure care coordination and continuity of care
• incorporate regulatory and specialty standards/guidelines
• systematically evaluate professional organizations’ standards of practice, incorporating them into the professional practice model and care delivery system
• use internal and external experts to improve the clinical practice setting 

Learn more about nursing at The Miriam Hospital