Striving to Be the Best
By Bobbi Mlynar
Originally published 08:57 a.m., February 7, 2008
Updated 08:57 a.m., February 7, 2008
Newman Regional Health is boldly going where few hospitals have gone before.
A team of hospital officials recently talked about progress made in 2007 and plans for more improvements in 2008 and beyond, all with eyes focused on patient safety.
The team was made up of Terry Lambert, administrator; Kathie Butcher, assistant administrator for quality service; Holly French, chief financial officer; Paula Taylor, assistant administrator and chief nursing officer; and Nancy LeClear, director of marketing and education. Each brought a different perspective on the hospital’s operations.
“I think one of the big steps we took forward in 2007 was by implementing our bedside scanning,” Taylor said.
Electronic records will be required by the federal government in 2014, Lambert said.
The scanning already implemented reads like science fiction. It began in the hospital laboratory, with bar code identification bracelets for patients. The bracelet ID is a work in progress that is being expanded throughout the hospital. Physicians will be able to write orders from patients’ rooms to a central system that will provide care providers full information about every patient; they also will be able to access information from outside the hospital on Blackberries and other personal data assistant devices. Vital signs will be readily available and easily compared.
The password-encrypted information on patients will be available only to a limited number of specified people.
The pharmaceutical piece of the system allows medical personnel to request medications from supplies, with labels printed out from a device carried by a nurse. The system will recognize when a patient’s medications may conflict and will alert the nurse.
“It will even tell you, ‘I do not have this medication paralleled with this patient,” Taylor said. “... Nurses have an awful lot to think about in a day’s time, and this just gives them one more assurance for patient safety.”
Insurance cards also will be scanned into the records and patients’ meal preferences will be sent electronically to the hospital’s kitchen, with a system capable of monitoring potential violations of diet restrictions.
Research still is being done to choose the remainder of the software and hardware for the paperless system envisioned for all records, up to and including billing through real-time bar code entries. The hospital’s technology department will need to create in-house systems specifically for Newman to best use the new technology, and that aspect is time-consuming, they said. When the technology chase ends in a purchase, officials anticipate an additional 12 to 18 months will be needed to complete the in-house work.
French said that Newman spent more than $1 million this year for a generator to ensure that information will be accessible even during lapses in electrical service, and backups of information are made and stored off-site.
“So we’re eliminating the paper shuffling,” Butcher said. “When you go electronic, the multiple health-care providers can look at the documents and provide more timely care.”
Progress in instituting IDs a little at a time already has resulted in a safer environment for patients, Taylor said.
Newman also has initiated a major project, “Saving 5 Million Lives,” that parallels a national effort. The patient safety initiative contains 12 points that are more than simple goals; they are serious mandates, including reducing injury, virulent staph infections, adverse reactions to drugs, post-surgery complications and eliminating Code Blues — no heartbeat, no pulse — outside the intensive care unit.
Taylor said that the latter can be possible by catching symptoms such as decreased consciousness or low or high blood pressure before they bloom into a life-threatening emergency.
“The national statistics show that eight hours before someone has a catastrophic event, there were subtle signs,” she said. “And we want to catch those subtle signs.”
Taylor said that patient safety also has been enhanced by construction projects that will create private rooms in some wings. The rooms can revert to semi-private when needed. Such work is almost completed on 3 West, and 2 South is scheduled to be under renovation in 2008.
Patients in the private rooms will be exposed to fewer contaminants because laundry and other wastes will be contained within each room, and potential infection from a roommate and the roommate’s visitors will be eliminated.
The obstetrics unit also was the target for room upgrades; sofabeds, refrigerators and microwaves were added as standard equipment.
“We’re trying to make the rooms more patient- and family-friendly,” LeClear said.
The Newman Auxiliary and the Newman Regional Health Foundation helped with the costs of the improvements.
The hospital has revved up its existing Foundation by hiring a part-time director, Karen Kenney.
“We have never had somebody dedicated to the Foundation,” French said.
Kenney has worked on adding names to the Tree of Life that hangs on the wall near the canopy entry and getting information out to the community.
“Even though she’s only been here part-time, she’s made a lot of progress,” LeClear said.
Kenney has been working with area churches and other entities to encourage them to purchase Automated External Defibrillator units that can help save lives by providing needed treatment immediately. The Foundation can get special group prices for the units, which often are needed in settings where many people gather, such as church services, schools and sporting events.
The Foundation also provides significant donations for nursing scholarships, Lambert said.
Other major changes and improvements are numerous, whether they were finished in 2007 or overlapped into 2008 and its own planned projects:
• Dr. Michael D. Yost, an orthopedic surgeon who specializes in sports medicine, joined the Newman Orthopedics and Sports Medicine practice in April 2007. The practice itself opened in January 2007 with Dr. Robert Rattay.
• An Aesthetic Medicine practice is expected to be introduced this year.
• Dr. Glenn Amundson, an ortho-spine surgeon, will begin seeing patients in Emporia this year. “We have several people now who are seeing him in Kansas City, so we are very excited to have him coming here,” French added.
• Two more specialists in obstetrics and gynecology have been recruited and are expected to arrive in August 2008. Dr. Patricia (Trish) Wood of Emporia and Dr. Chris Faulkner of Americus will join Drs. Rochelle S. Waite and David Kemp in the Medical Arts building, Lambert said.
All of the companies and services under the Newman Regional Health umbrella have shown growth and improvement that are expected to continue through 2008. Changes already are underway in some cases:
• Emergency Services of Kansas, based in Newton, took over as contractor to provide emergency room physicians. The company will send out its own bills separate from Newman billings.
• Medical equipment, with additional services such as shoe-fittings for diabetics, have been added along with specialized staff at Newman Medical Equipment and Supply.
• Surgeries and outpatient surgeries continue to increase, in part due to the closing of the Emporia Surgical Hospital.
• The wound care clinic, under the direction of Dr. Robert Dorsey, continues to bring in new healing products and equipment.
• A radiology room will be installed soon.
• New radiology equipment will be added in the orthopedic clinic.
• The telephone system is being updated at a cost of about $95,000.
• Defibrillators are being updated and AEDs are being added.
• New scopes and equipment for gastric surgeries have been added.
• The hospital’s physical therapy unit has expanded.
• New lights and other equipment have been added in the OB/GYN area.
“If you’re not changing in the health care industry and if you’re not growing, you’re not providing the best services to the patients,” Lambert said.