Volume 25
Number 24
November 28, 2014
Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania
`` In 2010, HUP’s three physician Santas were (from left) Ted Cheek, Peter Quinn, and Bill Hanson.
holidayspirit A TRADITION OF
AT HUP
Abrahamsohn Committee celebrates 100 years
“Yes,Virginia, there is a Santa Claus.” In fact – thanks to the efforts of the Abrahamsohn Christmas and Easter Committee — HUP has three! The tradition started in the late 1880’s with Oscar Abrahamsohn, an immigrant who supported himself by teaching German to medical students. Later, as a hospital volunteer at HUP, he personally funded gifts and decorated HUP’s children’s ward for Christmas and Easter. In 1901, the Christmas Fund was established with $95 Abrahamsohn raised for presents and decorations. Over the years, others began to donate money as
INSIDE Announcement from Medical Records........................2 What’s Haunting Your Unit.......2 Surgical Path Moves to Meet Increasing Needs.......................3 A Day in the Life 2014...............3 CAREs Grant Winners!.............4
“Though traditions of the committee may change over the next 100 years, it is hard to imagine that the commitment to follow in the spirit and footsteps of Oscar Abrahamsohn will ever disappear from HUP.” well to help fund the holiday festivities for patients. To better support its fundraising efforts, the Abrahamsohn Committee became incorporated — with the official signing of the charter in 1914 — under the wing of the Board of Women Visitors. In the early years, it was committee members who distributed toys to children at HUP and a variety of gifts to adult patients. According to Patty Cheek, Committee member, “Christmas gifts for women included compacts, writing paper, talcum powder, scarves and pins, and manicure kits. Men received boxes of handkerchiefs, ties, pen and pencil sets, wallets, and leather shaving kits.” That all changed when a physician — Harry Fields — took over the reins and brought gifts to patients. Since that time, many
notable physician Santas have followed in his footsteps, including Erwin (Rudy) Schmidt; Sylvan Eisman; C. William Hanson, III; Fred Kaplan; C. William Schwab; Theodore Cheek; and Cliff Deutschman. Over the years, the tradition evolved to handing out pointsettias (both real and artificial ) and it now takes three Santas to visit all the patient units! HUP’s current physician Santas — Peter Quinn, P.J. Brennan, and Robert Gaiser — will visit patients this Christmas morning, accompanied by enthusiastic carolers and guests from all over the country. Why leave a warm home on Christmas morning to visit HUP patients? “Most who attend feel as if it were they who have received the gift of the true meaning of Christmas,” said Cheek. (Continued on page 4)
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Announcements
from Medical Records AS PART OF PENN MEDICINE’S CONSOLIDATION PLAN, most of Health Information Management (Medical Records) from HUP, PAH, and PPMC will move to 1500 Market Street on December 4. Effective December 5, the new address and contact information are: 1500 Market Street, 14W, Philadelphia, PA 19102 Main Line: 267-758-4111 Please note: Not all HIM functions will move. The release of information (medical record requests) will remain in each hospital.
WHAT’S
HAUNTING YOUR UNIT?
In keeping with a Halloween theme, HUP’s Hand Hygiene Committee held a “What’s Haunting Your Unit?” Poster Exhibition and Competition last month to rev up the focus on the #1 way to reduce hospital infections. Each poster featured an organism that presented a challenge to the unit. The winning posters, including the Most Creative winner by Silverstein 11, will be used hospitalwide for hand-hygiene awareness.
THE MEDICAL RECORD SCANNING FUNCTIONS OF ALL THREE HOSPITALS have already moved to a centralized location, at PPMC (Myrin basement, room M06). A courier now picks up the charts at HUP and PAH and delivers them to the PPMC scanning center. Once the paper medical records are sent to PPMC, providers will need to utilize OnBase to access the chart. For questions or more information, please call: • Shelli Thomas | 215-847-6594 • Lana Brunkel | 215-439-5338 • Michele Feisel | 267-216-8391 • Sherine Koshy | 215-900-0369 HIM AND CLINICAL DOCUMENTATION IMPROVEMENT TEAMS have developed documentation tips to help providers capture the patient’s acuity with precise and complete documentation. Provider documentation drives everything in our organization, from publicly available quality of care scores to appropriate coding and reimbursement. Tips can be found at: http://uphsxnet.uphs.upenn.edu/ceqi/medrecordspage.html
Holly Days Are Coming! Once again, HUP will reach out to the less fortunate in our community through its Holly Days program. The program will again support a local facility for women and children in transition, providing toys and clothing, but new this year it will also reach out to a facility for displaced veterans. And we will continue to support Covenant House, a crisis center in Philadelphia for homeless and runaway youth, through gift certificates for food (for example, from Acme), and clothing and other items from Walmart or Target. To learn more about “adopting” a family in need and filling their holiday wish list or donating, contact Phyllis Murray at 615-0431.
ARE YOU PLANNING HOLIDAY OUTREACH? Is your department or unit volunteering time to help local communities around the holidays? If so, please be sure to let HUPdate know! Email a short write-up about your outreach activities (and a photo if possible) to sally.sapega@uphs.upenn.edu no later than Friday, December 12 to be included in the special holiday issue. We want to include as many community efforts as possible in upcoming issues!
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Heartfelt Thanks A letter to Al D’Angelantonio, MD, of Plastic Surgery
`` Surgical Pathology’s new work space is four times as big as its former space (inset).
SURGICAL PATH
Moves to Meet Increasing Needs Before moving to their new location on Founders 6, the pathology assistants (PAs) in HUP’s Surgical Pathology Laboratory worked in very close quarters. “If I swiveled my chair at my station, I would bump into the person sitting next to me,” said Kevin Hirokawa, PA, Gross Room coordinator. “It was that close.” This is no surprise. Thanks to the increase in ORs — in both HUP and the Perelman Center — the number of surgical specimens they process has more than doubled in the past 10 years. Two types of processing are done in the lab. For immediate diagnosis (used when a surgeon needs results while a patient is in the OR), the PAs do a frozen section. They use a cryostat to freeze the specimen, slice a small section (less than the width of human hair) and put it on a slide for microscopic analysis. “We provide 95 percent of diagnoses of simple specimens within 20 minutes but our average is 13 to 15 minutes.” It’s a small subset of the cases they do, averaging about 20 a day, but “we’ve had days of 60 frozens coming in,” Hirokawa said. “Our record is 74.” Routine specimens — the majority of their work — are performed at a workbench. The PA or resident carefully describes each specimen (eg, color, shape, size, weight) using customized Dragon speech recognition software and then
cuts and prepares portions of the tissue to be sent to histology, where they are put on slides and analyzed for diagnosis or treatment.
We have been writing down our feelings and thoughts about you for days because what you have done was give us our life back with a rainbow….How you have given us hope and a dream that has come true. How on that first visit with you we left with a feeling of relief that this was all going to be ok…. I remember telling you that you are our “Angel” that we have been waiting for. And you truly are. We also can’t thank you enough for introducing us to the team of doctors and nurses who cared for [my husband] while in the hospital and the care that he received. Thank you my friend, you will always be in our prayers. We will pray that God will always be at your side and the strength in your hands.”
To accommodate the 36,000 specimens they now process in a year, the new work space is almost four times as big as their former location, which was only 15-feet wide. “It was difficult to squeeze past someone in the frozen area,” Hirokawa said. “Elbow room was at a premium!” The space has twice as many benches (14) for routine processing and five workstations for frozen sections. Even more important, because this type of work requires PAs to stand bent over equipment for hours at a time, “we can now adjust the cryostat and the workbench to better fit each employee’s height.” Each workstation also has a light which can be positioned over their work as well as backdraft ventilation which draws fumes away from the person working. A safety mechanism immediately alerts employees if the ventilation at the bench or room goes down. “The new Surgical Pathology Laboratory provides increased space for the continued growth of the Department,” said Kathleen Montone, MD, director of Surgical Pathology. “It is a credit to the team efforts by faculty and staff alike that there was no discernible effect on patient care throughout this longterm project.”
`` A pharmacist in the MYPennPharmacy program is busy filling prescriptions for inpatients at the time of discharge.
A Day in the Life
2014
The “Day in the Life” project is a yearly visual documentation of life here at the University and Penn Medicine. To see photos that capture a glimpse of the daily activity throughout Penn Medicine, go to http://bit.ly/11lmMb0.
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TO THE LATEST WINNERS OF A PENN MEDICINE CARES GRANT:
Brenda Gilchrist (PAH) OB/GYN Calvary St. Augustine’s Annual Health Fair Jade Lee (HUP) Staffing For All Seasons Healthy Hearts Jennifer Egg (PAH) Abramson Cancer Center Look Good, Feel Better Rhonda Holmstrom (HUP) Trauma Injury Prevention Raymond Townsend (PSOM) Medicine Hypertension and Glucose Screening Yu-Heng Guo (PSOM) Psychiatry Asian Mental Health Awareness and Outreach Jill Townsend (CCH) Outpatient Rehab Community Volunteers in Medicine Bernadette Wheeler (CCA) OB/GYN Black Women in Sports Foundation Jacqueline Felicetti (CCH) Human Resources Wounded Warrior Project Lawrence Davis (PPMC) Psychiatry Bread of Life Food Pantry Rebecca Salowe (PSOM) Ophthalmology Glaucoma Bus Kelsey Nawalinski (HUP) Neurosurgery Back on My Feet Andrea Devoti (CCH) Neighborhood Health Senior Healthlink Program Penn Medicine awards grants up to four times per year for expenses (not including salary support) directly related to community outreach activities. The grant funding can be used for projects big and small and for new or existing community outreach efforts. The next two deadlines for grants are:
DE C E M B E R 1 | MA RC H 1
EBOLA PREPAREDNESS ««
CONGRATULATIONS
AT PENN MEDICINE
The likelihood of an outbreak of Ebola in this country remains extremely remote but, like hospitals throughout this country, Penn Medicine continues to prepare for the potential of receiving a suspected or confirmed Ebola patients. We encourage all staff to continue to check for updates at http://pennpoint.uphs. upenn.edu/sites/ebola/default.aspx. Also, two phone lines are available to assist clinicians and staff around the clock: • Clinicians with patient-related questions should call 215-614-0524. A physician will answer and handle calls about screening, isolation and, if necessary, lead arrangements for patient transport to HUP from another entity. • General questions not pertaining to direct patient care can be directed to 215-615-2929.
To learn more and apply, go to http://uphsxnet.uphs.upenn.edu/community/.
A TRADITION OF (Continued from page 1)
holidayspirit
“Santa” Hanson remembered how many of the patients would open up to him and talk almost as if they were children visiting Santa. And children, who often accompany parent carolers, have an intense, almost magical effect on the spirit of patients, Cheek said. “Upon receiving a poinsettia from a young caroler, an elderly patient, with tears running down her face, mouthed through her tracheostomy, ‘You are a blessing to me.’” The Abrahamsohn Christmas and Easter Committee will soon start to decorate the hospital, following in the footsteps of its founder. While the original emphasis was on stringing yards of garland – and putting up as many as 500 wreaths! – today members
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AT HUP set up and decorate holiday trees in many of the public areas of the hospital. They also distribute artificial trees to the patient care units for the annual — and very popular — tree decoration competition (Winners will be announced December 11!). At Easter, the committee, guests and children, dressed as bunnies, deliver spring flowers to patients at HUP. Though traditions of the committee may change over the next 100 years, “it is hard to imagine that the commitment to follow in the spirit and footsteps of Oscar Abrahamsohn will ever disappear from HUP,” Cheek said.
HUPdate EDITORIAL STAFF Sally Sapega Editor and Photographer
Alexa Creter and Lisa Paxson Graphic Designer
ADMINISTRATION
Susan E. Phillips Senior Vice President, Public Affairs Holly Auer Director of Communications CONTACT HUPDATE AT: 3535 Market Street, Mezzanine Philadelphia, PA 19104 phone: 215.662.4488 fax: 215.349.8312 email: sally.sapega@uphs.upenn.edu HUPdate is published biweekly for HUP employees. Access HUPdate online at http://news.pennmedicine.org/inside/hupdate.