December 2008

The following are highlights from this month's edition of SMCS Physician (view entire newsletter here):

A Message from Tom Gagen, CEO

As the year winds down, I want to thank our medical staff for your dedication toward making Sutter Medical Center, Sacramento safer and more affordable for our patients. Physician engagement is a crucial component to many successful initiatives and programs. Thanks to your hard work, we’re making great progress toward enhancing our quality of care and increasing patient satisfaction. I want to highlight a few programs that illustrate this dedication and determination.

Patient Access Center

Borne from a successful program that launched at Sutter Medical Center, Sacramento, the Patient Access Center is planned as a central point of entry for patients transferring into or between hospitals within the Sacramento Sierra Region, which will soon include Sutter Amador Hospital in Jackson and Sutter Solano Medical Center in Vallejo. This center will supplement, but not replace, existing transfer processes that are currently available for neonatal intensive care, pediatric, psychiatric and trauma services.

The center will be staffed 24 hours a day, seven days a week by registered nurses and referral coordinators. It will also have a medical director who will facilitate coordination with other medical professionals and offer physicians clinical decision-making support.

Physicians have provided tremendous input into this process, which is considerably strengthening the program. They are forging strong relationships with medical staff and administration; encouraging direct physician-to-physician communication between affiliates; providing input on program aspects, including data collection.

“This process has been catapulted based on all the physician input,” says Cecilia Hernandez, M.D., director of medical affairs, SMCS.

Hospitalists and Average Length of Stay

Under the leadership of Michael Abate, M.D., SMCS’s hospitalist program has steadied considerably since 2006, when hospitalist staff levels were maintained and eventually expanded with the addition of nine new hospitalists. By stabilizing staffing, the group could focus more intently on more timely discharges. Those efforts, combined with nurse-physician rounding and meeting with case managers in a round-robin format, has considerably helped decrease the average length of stay, or ALOS, for patients.

Read the entire entire newsletter here.