Fontenotes
By Teri Fontenot

The governance of Woman’s Hospital is the responsibility of twelve community and physician leaders with a variety of backgrounds, skills, and credentials. Two new directors were recently elected by the Foundation to serve a three year term: Matt McKay, chairman, president, and CEO of All Star Automotive Group; and Mike Wampold, CEO, Wampold Companies.  Officers for the next year are:   

Markham McKnight, president, BancorpSouth Insurance, Chair                                
Susan Puyau, M.D., Chair elect
Rob Stuart, president, southern region, Capital One Bank, Secretary/treasurer
Dore Binder, M.D., Immediate past chair

These officers, along with continuing directors and the two new directors, are responsible for establishing our vision and ensuring that our mission is fulfilled.  With the guidance and commitment of our very talented board, our strategic goals will be achieved for all who receive care and work at Woman’s.  The challenge of a replacement campus is unique and we have already benefited greatly from their knowledge of finance, construction, insurance, clinical design, and strategic alliance opportunities with the medical staff. 

The board serves without compensation, but contributes many hours of time in addition to financial resources and expertise.  Photos of all directors are in the lobby.  If you see any of them, please thank them for their service and dedication.

Wrist Bands

In 2008, the American Hospital Association (AHA) issued a quality advisory recommending that hospitals consider using standardized colors for alert wrist bands to improve patient safety. In response to the national initiative the Louisiana Hospital Association (LHA) recommended that the national standard colors be used to standardize color-coded alert wrist bands in Louisiana. 

Color-coded wrist bands have been used to assist healthcare workers in communicating about patients with risk factors such as allergy alert, do not resuscitate and fall risk.  However, due to the lack of a standardization of colors there were reports of patient harm or near misses because one color could mean allergy alert in one hospital and do not resuscitate in another. Standardizing the colors of the wrist bands used in hospitals was determined to be a sensible approach to improving patient safety.

On June 1, 2009 Woman’s Hospital will implement  LHA’s recommendation for standardized color-coded wrist bands.  Red bands will signify an allergy; yellow for a fall risk; green latex allergy and pink for restricted extremity.  While LHA recommends the use of purple for “do not resuscitate” (DNR), traditionally purple at Woman’s has been used to designate an allergy alert.  Therefore, to allow time for all staff members to become familiar with the new red color for allergy, the color purple for DNR will not be implemented until January, 2010.  Currently, the process for “do not resuscitate” patients is to document their request on the chart, this process will not change until January 2010.

The recommended colors that will be implemented June 1, 2009 are:

M/B Charge Nurse Retreat
The role of a Mother/Baby charge nurse is multifaceted and is quite valuable to the workforce. The M/B charge nurse leaders must possess skills in group process facilitation, communication, delegating, team building, conflict management, problem solving, and quality management.

On April 20, 2009, the Mother/Baby department held a charge nurse retreat at the hospital. The Mother/Baby department has 23 relief charge nurses that rotate the role and responsibilities of unit charge nurse. The retreat highlighted material on diffusing negativity in the workplace and promoting a positive work environment which included team-building exercises. The topics were led by Aimee Hansen, Educational Services Leadership Development Coordinator. Thank you, charge nurses for your stellar leadership, integrity, and dedication to our patients, the M/B department, and the mission and vision of Woman's Hospital

Patient Satisfaction

Our Year-To-Date Patient Satisfaction Score is 94.02%!

Patient satisfaction at 94% or higher

Our “very satisfied” patient satisfaction scores in March were:

Inpatient 85.1% (decreased from 91.9% in February)
Outpatient 96.4% (decreased from 96.6% in February)
Combined 93.8% (decreased from 95.1% in February)

Our inpatient scores substantially declined in March.  The most positive comments are about our wonderful staff and the overall experience at Woman’s. Negative comments are about parking and room comfort and cleanliness.  The Patient Satisfaction Committee analyzes scores and comments each month and takes action to address negative trends whenever possible. The survey comments also helped us to determine the reasons for the lower scores this month.  These actions should increase our scores in the future:

                     *Minimizing noise
                     *Knocking before entering the room
                     *Introducing yourself to the patient and greeting them courteously

Ensuring that our rooms are clean and in good repair – please remember that it is the responsibility of all of us to take care of the things we can and to contact Environmental Services or Maintenance when necessary. Extension 4276 is a direct line to the environmental services supervisor on-duty and is answered 24/7.

Patient satisfaction scores, survey copies and comments can be found on the Intranet. From the home page, select “Service Excellence Hub” at the bottom of the page.  Service excellence presentations and videos are now available on the Hub.  Please take some time to view the presentations and watch the video clips.  In less than 10 minutes, you can laugh at your coworkers and learn/refresh service excellence skills on three different topics.  If you have ideas or suggestions for improving patient satisfaction, please let your Director or VP know.

Operational efficiency at 83.50% or less

Operational efficiency measures how much we spend on controllable expenses as a percentage of revenue collected. Expenses associated with the new hospital are budgeted separately, and do not affect this score. Investment performance is also excluded. If we meet the target, the minimum bonus pool is $200,000. For every dollar in savings or revenue that is favorable to the target, $.50 will be added to the bonus pool. For this reason, and because we have to meet or exceed budget for the year in order to meet the target, it’s very important that we continue to be diligent about increasing revenue and controlling costs. Our current year-to-date score is 82.2%.  This excellent score is a direct result of your efforts to improve efficiency and control costs through our We Can Do This initiative.

Thanks for your commitment to our patients, to each other and to Woman’s.