eFocus - October 2023
Welcome to eFocus. Our goal is to provide you with timely, informative and useful short summaries and links about UM UCH related news, issues or events. Feel free to contact us if you have news to share, story ideas or any other feedback. As always, your comments are welcome.
This month's eFocus topics include:
Welcome!
UM Upper Chesapeake Health has never shied away from a challenge. We have some of the most transformational months ahead of us as we look ahead to January 5, 2024, when we will begin the transition from UM Harford Memorial Hospital to UM Aberdeen Medical Campus. Take a look at the calendar and timeline, as we stop taking new cases on January 5 at UM HMH ICU, IMC and OR. We will then sequentially wind down UM HMH over the month with a final move day of February 6, 2024. This is an exciting, once-in-a-generation change to how we deliver health care in Harford County.
At the same time, we continue on our journey to become a High Reliability Organization (HRO). We have integrated Just Culture training into our peer review committees and physician leadership. Some will be taking HRO training over the coming months. We also have the implementation of LENS boards, which you can see in one of the 5 areas: Pharmacy, 3East, ICU, Facilities and Rehab. This will help facilitate communication and transparency of our quality metrics, unit initiatives and help foster engagement. Check it out!
Lastly, we will be converting our medical dispensing machines from Diebold to Pyxis at the same time we are transitioning from UM HMH. With all of this going on, we have to keep our focus on our north star—the patient. We continue to succeed in HAIs, but we remain challenged with Patient Experience. The two initiatives that are evidenced based good medicine is Triad Rounding (MD + RN + Patient) at the bedside and Commit to Sit when talking to a patient. We also have our unit-based medical directors and would like to introduce them in this eFocus—take a look!
I know there is a lot happening and hope everyone has an opportunity to spend time with family and friends during this Halloween. Take care and thank you for all that you do for our patients!
Fermin Barrueto, Jr., MD, MBA
Senior Vice President/CMO
Medical Staff Affairs
Compassion
Remember the 10/5 Rule
The 10/5 Rule states that when a team member is within ten feet of someone, always smile and make eye contact. When a team member is within five feet, greet them with a friendly "Hello" or other greeting.
Patient Experience – Get to Know Me Board Video
The healing power of the Get to Know Me Board helps man overcome a potentially deadly stroke.
Senator Bob Hooper House – Donation Drive
Palliative Care is hosting a Fall Donations Drive!
Spiritual Care Services
Please remember that spiritual care is available here at UM UCH for all patients and team members. Our spiritual care team offers a myriad of services including: blessings, prayers, spiritual and emotional support, spiritual counseling, end-of-life care, religious and spiritual sacraments, guidance and education. Thank you to Allen Siegel and his team of 35 volunteers, a Catholic priest chaplain, three PRN chaplains and one full-time chaplain—Allen, himself!—for their service and the many lives they touch.
Excellence
Kaufman Cancer Center Celebrates Ten Years
On October 4, UM Upper Chesapeake Health celebrated the tenth anniversary of its Kaufman Cancer Center. An early morning penlight ceremony honored our beginning, our dedicated team and our benefactors, Pat and Scot Kaufman. From inspiring words of hope and a special breakfast and lunch to celebrating our successes and challenges over the past decade, we look to the future and our mission to continue providing state-of-the-art cancer care to people in our community.
Unit Medical Directors
We are pleased to share that we have identified providers to lead—in tandem with our nurse managers—the below units. This important step forward in the dyad leadership model will support our HRO journey to consistently improve performance through deference to expertise in making quick decisions to response to data with meaningful solutions.
| Nursing Unit | Unit Manager | Medical Director |
| UCMC 3W | Katelyn Slonecker | Timothy McCall, DO |
| UCMC 3E | Terri Meekins | Tonya Appleby, CRNP |
| UCMC 3ET | Sharon Adamski | Sher Humayun, DO |
| UCMC 2W | Kim Peacher | Sherry Sanchez, CRNP |
| HMH 3S | Cindy Graziosi | Umer Farooq, MD |
Safety, Quality, PX and HAI Dashboards
Interested in seeing how we're performing in HAIs, mortality, COPD care path, hand hygiene and more? You can review our numbers via these dashboards:
Discovery
In The Literature
Check out the latest roundup of Dr. Leo's "In the Literature", where he reviews various medical studies and articles.
Integrity
Pearls of Wisdom from Quality Management
As we all work toward better outcomes for our patients and in the spirit of process improvement, we would like to draw your attention to the below information on findings gathered from case reviews.
- In order for the entire health care team to understand the plan for patient transfers between hospitals, a transfer time period needs to be documented by the provider.
- Provider contact information can be found on the on-call schedule, which is available via the TIGER schedule link on the UCH intranet home page.
- Members of the healthcare team are encouraged to communicate freely in support of patient safety and take action if patient safety is or may be at risk by following the “Stop the Line” procedure. Acknowledgement of a request must be done in a timely and respectful manner to achieve the best results for all involved.
- To ensure proper follow-up, include all pertinent diagnoses in your discharge summary.
- If you request a Wound Care/Ostomy consultation, be aware that they are available Monday through Friday. Due to volumes and availability, patients may be triaged to be seen the next day. If consulted after hours or over the weekend, the patient may be seen Monday or the next working day. There is a Wound Care order set that includes nurse driven interventions.