SHERIDAN — Members of the Sheridan Memorial Hospital Board of Trustees discussed the hospital’s plan for improving operations — a plan focused on enhancing patient experience, quality of care and safety as well as long-term sustainability — while acknowledging fatigue faced by health care workers attempting to navigate the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic during their monthly meeting Wednesday.
According to SMH Chief Medical Officer Dr. John Addlesperger, the number of COVID-19 patients currently hospitalized reached nine Wednesday, a significant decrease from the previous few days. However, local health care workers, like workers around the world, are nonetheless exhausted from the seemingly endless labor required by the pandemic.
And new pandemic challenges — including administering booster shots and vaccinating children younger than 12 — continue to arise. For instance, when asked how after the Food and Drug Administration advisors backed use of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine for children ages 5 to 11 Tuesday, Addlesperger responded SMH is in the process of preparing a patient-friendly environment to vaccinate young kids. The pandemic’s constant flux, hospital officials said, ensures it is more and more difficult for health care workers to see the light at the end of the COVID-19 tunnel.
There are, the board said, several programs in place to support health care workers as the pandemic drags on, from coffee carts to prepared meals, gift baskets to car washes. Local organizations have offered to provide health care workers at SMH with additional resources. These, the board agreed, have been beneficial to workers and offered a nice opportunity to connect to the community.
The board also emphasized departments within the hospital that are not on the “front lines” of the pandemic have offered to support departments in need of help. Although alternate department availability may change as patients seek the care they’ve been putting off during the pandemic, the board said the amount of collaboration and teamwork has been heartening.
“People are tired,” said Sheridan Memorial Hospital CEO Mike McCafferty, “but they keep showing up everyday and doing the work...it’s really amazing.”
Despite this persistent fatigue, the board focused much of its meeting on SMH’s commitment to improving patient health care outcomes and experiences. SMH officials outlined four strategic priorities for the hospital to improve performance in spite of the pandemic: patient experience, quality, safety and sustainability.
SMH’s patient experience metrics are based on surveys completed after hospital visits and ask patients to determine whether SMH staff consistently provided compassionate care. According to data presented before the board, patients do not consistently rate care received at SMH as compassionate, and there has been no improvement in inpatient or outpatient ratings of this kind for the past two years.
Hospital officials announced they would conduct surveys, seek input from community members and review medication communication policies to “create a culture of ‘always’” at SMH, in which patients are always rating care as compassionate.
SMH Director of Quality Liz Mahoney explained SMH’s quality of care is generally very good — based on established metrics including mortality rates, 30-day readmission rates and other measurable factors — but urged practitioners to maintain or improve the quality of care.
“It’s a huge improvement,” Mahoney said, referring to the hospital’s 5% drop in mortality rate in the past two years, “but we can’t let up on the gas.”
Mahoney explained SMH is planning to improve quality of care by focusing on decreasing the number of 30-day hospital readmissions. To do this, hospital officials will create a system for identifying patients at risk for readmission — often due to medication cost, lack of transportation or other social issues — and plan to address these issues prior to release.
SMH also plans to improve safety for patients and workers with the ultimate goal of zero harm at the hospital. To do this, hospital officials explained to the board, SMH intends to strengthen management systems, identify safety hazards in consistent morning meetings and cultivate a culture of transparency.
Finally, SMH officials hope to make their intended high level of care financially sustainable. SMH Chief Financial Officer Nathan Stutte explained the hospital is on track to meet its goal of breaking even this year, despite cost increases and staff retention issues.
To accommodate for Thanksgiving, the board will meet next Dec. 1 at 4 p.m.
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October 28, 2021 at 11:45PM
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Sheridan Memorial Hospital Board of Trustees commits to providing compassionate care despite worker fatigue - The Sheridan Press
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