Thursday, April 7, 2011

Extra Extra Read All About It!

A friend from a competing organization let me know that he enjoys reading information I send out in our physician newsletter. I did not ask how he obtains the newsletter however we live in a small healthcare world. So, in the interest in getting the word out ahead of time, here is my update for our next edition:

"Last week, we had nine Town Hall meetings to accommodate the different shifts and days. It is not always easy for people to break away for a Town Hall or come in on their off time. You have a Voice in our organization and we want to ensure that SJMC is the place where you prefer to practice medicine. One thing is certain; all your efforts are so greatly appreciated. Our work is hard and our patients need us more than ever before. It is our job to keep mining for ways that we can care for those we serve and ensure that our health care system is focused on providing quality care in a compliant, safe, cost effective and service oriented manner.

The following summarizes some of the key themes we discussed: We have seen a lot of great improvements at St. Joseph Medical Center over the past year. One thing is for certain: changes in health care are constant and will continue across the country for years to come. Healthcare Reform will impact St. Joseph Medical Center by approximately $50 million over the next 10 years. It is imperative for us to look at our organizational goals and understand how we contribute to these goals and how we can make the greatest impact.

The Organizational Goals in line with our mission, vision and values include the following.
· Quality Care
· Compliance and Safety
· Market Growth & Operating Effectiveness
· Patient Satisfaction

So how will we support these goals moving forward? This is where we need everyone to understand their role in achieving the organizational goals above and help foster priorities for improvement and innovation.

Other Town Hall updates included:

· We have seen continued growth this year in the following areas: overall admissions, neurosciences, cardiology, women's services, general surgery, orthopedics, rehab unit, endoscopy, inpatient surgery and our outpatient center, South Kansas City Surgery Center.

· Our focus will continue to be 100% private rooms. We are opening 3 North in May with 16 additional Telemetry beds. This will allow us to take one of the units on the 4th floor and convert from 24 beds to 16 private. In all, we will have eight additional beds in our system with 32 of them being private.

· Later this month we will celebrate the opening of our neurointerventional Bi-Plane suite.

· We opened a Cardiac PET scanner last month along with our Cardiac Device Clinic.

· SJMC was approved for an eight-bed Intensive Care Unit with a focus on Neurosciences. This will include a domino of moves - the planning is underway with an expected opening date of July 2012. This addition will allow us to focus on CCU as all Cardiac and convert the remaining semi-private rooms into private.

· Our associate turnover rate did go up a year ago and has been on a downward trend for the last six months with our lowest nursing turnover in years this past February.

· Our inpatient and outpatient satisfaction scores are on the rise since we focused on three questions and three behaviors per area.

· We have implemented Safety Huddles in an effort to reduce any harm or potential harm to patients and those we serve.

· Our last Joint Commission survey was the best we have done in many years. That took all of our efforts and we should be extremely proud.

Thank you for serving our mission and for your continued support of St. Joseph Medical Center and Carondelet Health. This is our health system and we all play a major role in achieving our organization's goals."

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