As published on Healthcare IT News by Bill Siwicki, December 11, 2018.
St. Mary Medical Center brought in a consulting team to reduce length of stay and the left-without-being-seen rate in its emergency department – and it worked.
The emergency department at St. Mary Medical Center in Apple Valley, California, was operating well over capacity, facing recurring gaps in department leadership, all while facing a systemwide upgrade to its electronic health record system.
The problem
Some patients were experiencing prolonged lengths of stay and the department had a high rate of patients leaving the hospital without being seen by a provider. While these issues were not unique to St. Mary Medical Center, the organization wanted to find a way to better serve its patients and support its employees.
It knew that to do so effectively, it would have to engage with external experts, said Marilyn Drone, RN, executive vice president, COO and chief nursing officer at St. Mary Medical Center.
Proposal
So, in 2015, the medical center reached out to Philips for their advice on overall emergency department performance improvement – including work with the EHR – and interim leadership.
The 212-bed community hospital asked Philips to provide interim emergency department leadership and lead a process improvement program to reduce left-without-being-seen volume and increase patient throughput capacity.
Philips brought in an interim emergency department manager and an emergency department director who immediately embedded themselves within the medical center's team. These individuals focused on day-to-day operations and staff management and quickly became leaders of the emergency services team.
Read the full article at Updating EHR templates to match staff workflows aids ED performance
Meet our team
JoAnn Lazarus, MSN, RN, CEN, FAEN
Principal and Practice Operations Lead
JoAnn is a leader for the emergency services team, providing interim leadership and leading process improvement projects. Among her accomplishments include establishing a fast track, a middle track, implementing a SWAT team for the waiting room, and decreasing the walk out rate by 25% in a 100,000-visit level 1 academic trauma center.
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Dan Hannan, MBA, BSN, BS, RN
Senior Consultant
Dan brings 30+ years of clinical care and leadership experience focused on ED and hospital-wide operations, informatics, throughput, and patient experience. He has helped providers reduce left without being seen, arrival-to-room, and ED length of stay.
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