Firm footing in Anchorage 2 CommonSpirit’s Lofton to retire 6 Art with attitude 8 PERIODICAL RATE PUBLICATION
FEBRUARY 1, 2020 VOLUME 36, NUMBER 2
SHHHH: Hospitals take steps to quiet nuisance alarms By LISA EISENHAUER
By LISA EISENHAUER
Monitor technician Alle Broom watches medical alarms as part of Mercy Virtual’s vAlert program on the campus of Mercy Hospital St. Louis in suburban Creve Coeur, Missouri. Mercy staff working in the facility check alarms from patient monitors at hospitals as part of a program to mitigate alarm fatigue for clinical staff on nursing units.
hospital floors from having to respond to “nonevents.” In a six-month period, the more than 10 million alarms that the vAlert technicians
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CREVE COEUR, Mo. — In an average month, a team of remote technicians at Mercy Virtual monitor roughly 1.7 million alarms from rooms with about 800 patients at Mercy hospitals. Until the team, part of Mercy Virtual’s vAlert program, was set up about six years ago, those alarms would have sounded on the hospital floors, creating noise that could annoy and even overwhelm patients and staff and requiring a response from nurses or medical technicians. Thomas Emerson, the manager of vAlert, said Mercy Virtual data confirm that most of the alarms sounding at bedsides are clinically irrelevant. Many of them are caused by patient movement or sensors that have become loose Emerson and so can be quickly dismissed by the remote monitor technicians, who get 280 hours of training on how to read the information sent by the sensors. The technicians spare the staffers on the
monitored resulted in about 5,800 calls to the wards. “It’s a tremendous amount of alarms that we prevent from ever reaching Continued on 5
Catholic health care associates tap into joy of serving others By JULIE MINDA
Erica Johnson says patients, visitors and staff tell her that joy is palpable at the four Hospital Sisters Health System hospitals she works with in her role as communications manager for HSHS’s Central Illinois division. “People say you can feel it when you walk the halls and when you interact with our team members — you can feel that joy and that extra touch of care.” HSHS is among several Catholic health systems and facilities that have joy as a core value. Ministry staff demonstrate joy in many ways that lighten the load and lift the spirit of others. Staff organize community food drives and sponsor needy families. They host department
Providence designs digital tools to improve access and care for all
Surgical technician Makita Johnson-Hunt, left, and supervisor Becky Patterson of Ascension St. Vincent’s Riverside in Jacksonville, Florida, join in a hospital celebration of a new caregiver experience model. That model in part is aimed at rejuvenating colleagues. That aim ties in with Ascension’s value to “Dedication: Affirming the hope and joy of our ministry.”
celebrations of quirky holidays like National Chocolate Chip Cookie Day. They perform acts of kindness and build human connections — a nurse who sits and talks with a lonely patient and a genial cafeteria employee spread joy. Whatever way it is shown, the joy these associates are acting upon “is not superficial,” says Sr. Joan Marie Stelman, OSB, mission integration leader at Essentia Health. “We find that what we do in health care is a calling and there is a deep satisfaction and peace that comes from helping others — and whatever we do to express that, we can see that the sense of joy can carry us all through some of the hard days” in health care.
Catholic health care systems, which provide special consideration for the poor and the vulnerable, must be steadfast in ensuring those populations benefit from technical innovations that can improve access to high-value care. Catholic Health World talked to Sara Vaezy, one of CHA’s 2019 class of Tomorrow’s Leaders and the chief digital strategy officer for Providence, about how that technoVaezy logically innovative system makes sure its patient-facing digital platforms are accessible to low-income patients, including those insured through Medicaid. Vaezy leads the development of the health system’s digital strategy and road map, digital partnerships and business development, and technology evaluation and pilots. Prior to coming to Providence, she worked for The Chartis Group, a health care management consulting firm. She graduated from the University of California, Berkeley with a bachelor’s degree in physics and philosophy and from the University of Washington’s School of Public Health with master’s degrees in health administration and public health focused on health care policy. How can digital innovations address disparities in the delivery of health care? Anytime we talk about disparities in health care, I think technology, generally speaking, has huge potential to democratize health care and make it widely available. It’s just a matter of making sure we’re directing our resources appropriately to serve the folks who are more vulnerable.
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St. Mary’s hosts medical mission from Japan to study, honor survivors of atomic bombings By KATHLEEN NELSON
Remember the horror. Honor the survivors. Learn from the past. As it has for the last quarter century, Dignity Health St. Mary’s Medical Center in San Francisco aided and honored the survivors of the Hiroshima and Nagasaki atomic bombings by hosting a medical mission from Japan researching the aftereffects of the bombings that ended World War II. “This was a defining moment for the Japanese people,” said Sr. Mary Kieffer, OP, who up until recently was vice president of mission integration at St. Mary’s,
part of CommonSpirit Health. “Through the mission, we hope to repair that damage, physically and emotionally.” Three dozen survivors, known as hibakusha, gathered at St. Mary’s for the three-day biennial conference in late October, some traveling more than six hours from their homes in northern and central California, circumventing the path of forest fires in the region. A seven-member team from the Hiroshima and Nagasaki prefectures collaborated with volunteers from St. Mary’s to conduct hematology tests, urinalysis, liver function tests, diabetes screening,
Dr. David Klein, right, president and chief executive of Dignity Health St Mary’s Medical Center in San Francisco, greets Nobuaki Nishikawa, of Hiroshima’s Atomic Bomb Survivors Support Division, at a conference held at St. Mary’s in October to support survivors and research the medical aftereffects of exposure to radiation from nuclear bombs.
thyroid gland function testing and serum cholesterol measurements. Also included in the exams are blood pressure screenings, weight and height measurements. Perhaps the most meaningful moments of the visit, though, are the one-on-one consultations with Japanese medical team physicians and interviews with the representatives from Hiroshima and Nagasaki, who are eager to hear the stories of the survivors. “The hibakusha were very grateful for the fellowship,” Sr. Kieffer said. “They appreciate the continued interest from the Continued on 7