West Valley Medical Center - February 08, 2018
Betsy Hunsicker

Betsy Hunsicker
CEO

Our physicians can’t imagine a world without West Valley.

That is our goal. We are fortunate to have a wonderful, collegial and highly qualified group of professionals that set West Valley apart for our patients and our staff. It is important that we continue to maintain – and improve – the excellent environment we have here at West Valley for you to practice. That covers everything from the care your patients receive to the process for scheduling and medical records.

We will be doing our 2018 Physician Engagement survey starting March 1. This year, the survey will be exclusively online! No more phone calls! That was something we heard from you loud and clear, and I’m thrilled that we were able to move to this online-only format.

The feedback you gave us in 2016 was very positive. It confirmed that we’re focused on the things that are important to you – nursing care (which went from the 48th percentile to the 90th), patient safety (82nd percentile to 93rd), quality of care (72nd percentile to 85th) and communication and voice (89th to the 97th percentile).

Although we were proud that so many of you rated West Valley “excellent” in these areas, they continue to be priorities for us, and I wanted to share just a few of the specific things we have implemented over the last year and half toward this goal of sustained excellence.

Nursing Care

  • We implemented Evidence-Based Clinical Documentation for our nursing documentation this past year. This change gave our nurses roughly an hour each day to spend with their patients instead of charting
  • We have consistent nurse leader rounding; on the inpatient units, the unit director (or charge nurse on weekends), rounds on every patient, every day to give patients an opportunity to voice concerns or recognition for their caregivers. It’s also an opportunity for the director to validate certain initiatives – like early ambulation, pain management, discharge instructions, etc.
  • For our new graduate nurses, we provided a 12-week onboarding program that gave them a bridge from nursing school to the real world. This program allowed them to do simulations and work in small groups, so they hit the ground running when they started their unit-based orientation. Additionally, we have added a Nurse Residency program for these new nurses, which gives them an opportunity to do some continuing education while also having their fellow new nurses as a support system.
  • We are using the SBAR format for all of our hand-offs. SBAR stands for “situation, background, assessment and recommendation.” We believe SBAR is also a great tool when nurses call physicians about their patients with questions or concerns. In 2018, we will be doing intensive audits of these handoffs to ensure staff use SBAR effectively.

Patient Safety & Quality

  • We have a dedicated Patient Safety Director – Renee DeHaas. Renee has been with us for many years in a variety of roles. In this new role, she will oversee all of our efforts to create a culture of safety – a culture where every person in our facility feels empowered to report safety concerns and be part of the solution to make things safer. We also want a non-punitive environment where we learn from errors and near misses, so we can grow, improve and be the best we can be.
  • In that spirit, we have initiated a Serious Adverse Event process that we apply to both serious adverse events and near misses. This process uses the traditional principles of process improvement to identify where we have opportunities to improve and create solutions to bridge those gaps. In the past, we used our Root Cause Analysis process (RCA) for the most extreme circumstances, but we believe this type of analysis is good any time we want to learn and grow. It engages our staff and physicians – those who know the process best – in a meaningful and constructive way.
  • In late 2017, we started a weekly quality meeting. This meeting focuses on both quality and patient experience. We track all of our various quality and safety measures and drill into each of those, identifying trends and engaging the entire hospital leadership team. We are working out the kinks of this new process, but once we’ve got it functioning well, we would like to have physicians involved.

Other Key Updates

  • While Meditech as an EMR has been a challenging transition, our director of Advanced Clinicals and many others have worked to make it as effective and customized as possible. We continue to refine and enhance the functionality to meet your everyday workflow needs:
    • We decreased the size and number of order sets, eliminating 375 orders. This significantly reduced the number of clicks to enter orders.
    • We consolidated the Worklist items pending signature to a single location, reducing the amount of time providers spend navigating the system.
    • Finally, PatientKeeper (PK) Mobile (iPhone app) allows you to view EKG and radiographic images. PK is much easier and more intuitive to use, and we are transitioning to PK as your user interface to Meditech. The first step in that process is Notewriter, and your utilization of PK has made us eligible for the Notewriter pilot, which is underway now! This is the first step to using a friendlier EMR interface to document and chart at West Valley.
  • To improve communication with families during surgery and post-op, we have created a “Family First” position. Formerly the Day Surgery CNA, this individual is responsible to report updates to families on a regular basis. We have also added two complimentary meal tickets for each surgical patient to accommodate families during their visit.
  • We replaced the video towers and scopes for Urology, General Surgery and GYN services. This was a common concern and we acted quickly to remedy this problem in 2016. You may have also noticed that we are finishing a complete Operating Room upgrade, including two new rooms, and retrofitting existing rooms with state-of-the-art booms and monitors. And no more Miami Vice blue paint!
  • The new physicians lounge is online and well-appointed to reflect our appreciation for the value you bring to West Valley on a daily basis.

Thank you in advance for your feedback and your participation in our annual Physician Engagement survey. We take your input very seriously and want you to feel confident recommending West Valley to your own family when they need care. We are committed to excellence in all areas and we need your constant feedback to help us get there and stay there.

Other Articles