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Full-Text Articles in Medicine and Health Sciences

What's Happening: December 30, 2019, Maine Medical Center Dec 2019

What's Happening: December 30, 2019, Maine Medical Center

What's Happening

No abstract provided.


What's Happening: December 16, 2019, Maine Medical Center Dec 2019

What's Happening: December 16, 2019, Maine Medical Center

What's Happening

No abstract provided.


What's Happening: December 9, 2019, Maine Medical Center Dec 2019

What's Happening: December 9, 2019, Maine Medical Center

What's Happening

No abstract provided.


What's Happening: December 2, 2019, Maine Medical Center Dec 2019

What's Happening: December 2, 2019, Maine Medical Center

What's Happening

No abstract provided.


What's Happening: November 25, 2019, Maine Medical Center Nov 2019

What's Happening: November 25, 2019, Maine Medical Center

What's Happening

No abstract provided.


What's Happening: November 18, 2019, Maine Medical Center Nov 2019

What's Happening: November 18, 2019, Maine Medical Center

What's Happening

No abstract provided.


What's Happening: November 11, 2019, Maine Medical Center Nov 2019

What's Happening: November 11, 2019, Maine Medical Center

What's Happening

No abstract provided.


What's Happening: November 4, 2019, Maine Medical Center Nov 2019

What's Happening: November 4, 2019, Maine Medical Center

What's Happening

No abstract provided.


What's Happening: October 28, 2019, Maine Medical Center Oct 2019

What's Happening: October 28, 2019, Maine Medical Center

What's Happening

No abstract provided.


What's Happening: October 21, 2019, Maine Medical Center Oct 2019

What's Happening: October 21, 2019, Maine Medical Center

What's Happening

No abstract provided.


What's Happening: October 14, 2019, Maine Medical Center Oct 2019

What's Happening: October 14, 2019, Maine Medical Center

What's Happening

No abstract provided.


What's Happening: October 7, 2019, Maine Medical Center Oct 2019

What's Happening: October 7, 2019, Maine Medical Center

What's Happening

No abstract provided.


Joint Annual Wellness Visit Scheduling, Rob Chamberlin, Jennifer Bliss, Andrea Lai, Paula Dougherty, Deb Swett, Logan Merrithew, Pam Stevens, Scott Williams Oct 2019

Joint Annual Wellness Visit Scheduling, Rob Chamberlin, Jennifer Bliss, Andrea Lai, Paula Dougherty, Deb Swett, Logan Merrithew, Pam Stevens, Scott Williams

MaineHealth Maine Medical Center

Problem/Impact Statement: The pharmacists in Scarborough & Westbrook Primary Care conduct Medicare Annual Wellness Visits (AWVs) with a physician. The pharmacist and physician see the patient individually. The practices achieved and sustained FY18 Joint AWV volume goals through a new process to reschedule physician-only AWVs to Joints AWVs with a pharmacist. This leads to reschedule rework and reduced time practice staff have for patient care.


What's Happening: September 30, 2019, Maine Medical Center Sep 2019

What's Happening: September 30, 2019, Maine Medical Center

What's Happening

No abstract provided.


What's Happening: September 23, 2019, Maine Medical Center Sep 2019

What's Happening: September 23, 2019, Maine Medical Center

What's Happening

No abstract provided.


What's Happening: September 16, 2019, Maine Medical Center Sep 2019

What's Happening: September 16, 2019, Maine Medical Center

What's Happening

No abstract provided.


What's Happening: September 9, 2019, Maine Medical Center Sep 2019

What's Happening: September 9, 2019, Maine Medical Center

What's Happening

No abstract provided.


Improving Patient Experience And Education By Leveraging Technology, Cathy Palleschi, Wendy Osgood, Mark Parker, Cecilia Inman, Alicia Russell, Eileen Shanahan, Erin Pappal Sep 2019

Improving Patient Experience And Education By Leveraging Technology, Cathy Palleschi, Wendy Osgood, Mark Parker, Cecilia Inman, Alicia Russell, Eileen Shanahan, Erin Pappal

Operations Transformation

It is estimated that 65% of the population are visual learners. With that in mind, a team of cardiac nurses in a large academic tertiary hospital developed a quality improvement project to hopefully improve patient engagement as well the patients’ perception that the nurses explained things in a manner that they could understand.

Baseline patient survey scores for the question, “Nurses Explained Things In A Way That I Understand”, were under the 75thpercentile for a period of 9 months. A root cause analysis was conducted and it demonstrated numerous reasons for this score.

Several countermeasures were instituted to …


Development Of Mechanical Ventilator Educational Brochure For Patients/Families, Cathy Palleschi, Wendy Osgood, Mark Parker Sep 2019

Development Of Mechanical Ventilator Educational Brochure For Patients/Families, Cathy Palleschi, Wendy Osgood, Mark Parker

Operations Transformation

Patients on mechanical ventilation often have no memory of events while being ventilated. In addition, families during this time, are often overwhelmed and unable to retain information provided to them by caregivers.

In attempt to address these issues, a team of care providers in an tertiary academic hospital established a goal to create a mechanical educational brochure with the goal to reduce associated anxiety and improve overall understanding of information provided.

As part of a clinical transformation project, a root cause analysis was conducted and a number of countermeasures were initiated. Some of these included a survey to capture feedback …


Facilitating Earlier Discharges To Decrease Avoidable Patient Days And Improve Flow For An Acute And Intermediate Care Unit, Natasha Bartlett Sep 2019

Facilitating Earlier Discharges To Decrease Avoidable Patient Days And Improve Flow For An Acute And Intermediate Care Unit, Natasha Bartlett

Operations Transformation

No abstract provided.


Strengthening Safety Culture By Leveraging The Daily Management System, Suneela Nayak, Mark Parker, Erin Graydon Baker, Amy Sparks, Ruth Hanselman, Stephen Tyzik, Sydney Green Sep 2019

Strengthening Safety Culture By Leveraging The Daily Management System, Suneela Nayak, Mark Parker, Erin Graydon Baker, Amy Sparks, Ruth Hanselman, Stephen Tyzik, Sydney Green

Operations Transformation

STRENGTHENING SAFETY CULTURE BY LEVERAGING THE DAILY MANAGEMENT SYSTEM

There is abundant evidence that links a strong culture of safety with improved patient and staff experience. However, there has been no clear avenue identified as to how to achieve this metric.

A team in a large academic tertiary teaching hospital set about leveraging their daily managing system (DMS) to attain improvement in their institution’s safety. The goals of this quality improvement project were to use DMS to identify and report safety concerns and increase frontline team knowledge and comfort with reporting safety concerns during Gemba walks.

A root cause analysis …


Treating Substance Use Disorders: Enhancing Attendance At The Weekly Inpatient Medication Assisted Treatment Group, Devon Gillis, Jayne Weisberg, Dena Whitesell, Amy Mcauliffe, Amy Sparks, Suneela Nayak, Ruth Hanselman, Stephen Tyzik Sep 2019

Treating Substance Use Disorders: Enhancing Attendance At The Weekly Inpatient Medication Assisted Treatment Group, Devon Gillis, Jayne Weisberg, Dena Whitesell, Amy Mcauliffe, Amy Sparks, Suneela Nayak, Ruth Hanselman, Stephen Tyzik

Operations Transformation

At a large academic tertiary medical center, an Integrated Medication Assisted Treatment (IMAT) program has been established for those medically stable inpatients with an addiction diagnosis. Over a four month period, this program had experienced a decline in attendance and a quality improvement project was initiated is to better understand the barriers to attendance and institute a process that would reverse the decline.

A goal was established to improve attendance by medically stable patients that have consented to participate to a minimum of 50%.

A root cause analysis outlined numerous causes for low attendance and several countermeasures were established to …


A Coaching And Team Performance Evaluation Model To Build Capacity For High-Impact Lean Improvement, Ruth Hanselman, Mark Parker, Suneela Nayak, Stephen Tyzik, Amy Sparks Sep 2019

A Coaching And Team Performance Evaluation Model To Build Capacity For High-Impact Lean Improvement, Ruth Hanselman, Mark Parker, Suneela Nayak, Stephen Tyzik, Amy Sparks

Operations Transformation

There is abundant evidence that links a strong culture of safety with improved patient and staff experience. However, there has been no clear avenue identified as to how to achieve this metric.

A team in a large academic tertiary teaching hospital set about leveraging their daily managing system (DMS) to attain improvement in their institution’s safety. The goals of this quality improvement project were to use DMS to identify and report safety concerns and increase frontline team knowledge and comfort with reporting safety concerns during Gemba walks.

A root cause analysis identified 5 areas for improvement and several countermeasures were …


Improving The Workflow And Partnership Between Registration And Clinical Staff In An Outpatient Urgent Care Center, Melissa Fairfield, Bailey Eells, Faye Collins, Joyce Cornish, Stephen Tyzik, Joy Moody, Wendy Osgood, Suneela Nayak, Ruth Hanselman, Amy Sparks Sep 2019

Improving The Workflow And Partnership Between Registration And Clinical Staff In An Outpatient Urgent Care Center, Melissa Fairfield, Bailey Eells, Faye Collins, Joyce Cornish, Stephen Tyzik, Joy Moody, Wendy Osgood, Suneela Nayak, Ruth Hanselman, Amy Sparks

Operations Transformation

An outpatient urgent care unit was experiencing challenges in balancing the need to register patients and delivering care in the timeliest manner as possible. Upon examination, it was found that delays were being experienced in patient triage and discharge that resulted in low patient satisfaction scores.

A team of providers was established to review all process steps and a quality improvement project was created to attain a goal of 100% of the time discharge would not be delayed due to incomplete registration.

Baseline metrics demonstrated current numbers of delayed discharges, median time from door to triage as well as door …


Implementation Of Trauma Service Guideline For The Use Of Phenobarbital In The Management Of The Non-Icu Trauma Patient At Risk Or Experiencing Severe Alcohol Withdrawal, Joseph Rappold, Julianne Ontengco, Stephen Tyzik, Suneela Nayak, Ruth Hanselman, Amy Sparks Sep 2019

Implementation Of Trauma Service Guideline For The Use Of Phenobarbital In The Management Of The Non-Icu Trauma Patient At Risk Or Experiencing Severe Alcohol Withdrawal, Joseph Rappold, Julianne Ontengco, Stephen Tyzik, Suneela Nayak, Ruth Hanselman, Amy Sparks

Operations Transformation

The trauma service in a large academic tertiary medical center admits a large proportion of patients with the secondary diagnosis of alcohol use disorder. Given the successful use of phenobarbital in the critical care unit for withdrawal prophylaxis and treatment of acute withdrawal, a quality improvement project was established to create and implement guidelines for the non ICU patient.

A root cause analysis demonstrated several issues to include inconsistent clinical decision documentation. As a result, several countermeasures were initiated to address the various issues.

Post implementation of countermeasures, a decrease in the amount of severe alcohol withdrawal as well as …


Reduction Of Catheter Associated Urinary Tract Infections (Cauti) In A Critical Care Setting, Deborah Jackson, Lindsey Lucas, Shawn Taylor, Jonathan Archibald, Stephen Tyzik, Suneela Nayak, Ruth Hanselman, Amy Sparks Sep 2019

Reduction Of Catheter Associated Urinary Tract Infections (Cauti) In A Critical Care Setting, Deborah Jackson, Lindsey Lucas, Shawn Taylor, Jonathan Archibald, Stephen Tyzik, Suneela Nayak, Ruth Hanselman, Amy Sparks

Operations Transformation

Urinary tract infections (UTIs) are the most common type of healthcare associated infections. Seventy five percent are related to indwelling urinary catheters. These infections come with increased morbidity and mortality risk. A team of intensive care providers at a large academic tertiary medical center initiated a quality improvement project to reduce the number of CAUTIs.

Baseline data established the total number of catheter days and CAUTIs by month. A subsequent root cause analysis was completed and several counter measures were developed to include a KPI implementation to track that all intensive care providers are educated in CAUTI and creation of …


Improving Patient Flow By Increasing Early Discharges On A Mother & Baby Unit, Faye Weir, Joy Moody, Kathleen Cyr, Cathy Palleschi, Stephen Tyzik, Joseph East, Heidi Morin, Suneela Nayak, Ruth Hanselman, Amy Sparks Sep 2019

Improving Patient Flow By Increasing Early Discharges On A Mother & Baby Unit, Faye Weir, Joy Moody, Kathleen Cyr, Cathy Palleschi, Stephen Tyzik, Joseph East, Heidi Morin, Suneela Nayak, Ruth Hanselman, Amy Sparks

Operations Transformation

Discharging patients early in the day has many advantages amongst which is increased bed availability. However, the experience in a large academic tertiary medical center demonstrated that most discharges occurred early to mid afternoon. A care team on a mother /baby unit established a quality improvement project to increase the number of discharges by 11AM and streamline key discharge planning activities.

A root cause analysis identified multiple barriers to attaining he established goals. To address these barriers, a multi prong approach was instituted to include a discharge education KPI for all unit staff.

Data collection post countermeasure implementation demonstrated some …


What's Happening: August 19, 2019, Maine Medical Center Aug 2019

What's Happening: August 19, 2019, Maine Medical Center

What's Happening

No abstract provided.


What's Happening: August 12, 2019, Maine Medical Center Aug 2019

What's Happening: August 12, 2019, Maine Medical Center

What's Happening

No abstract provided.


What's Happening: August 5, 2019, Maine Medical Center Aug 2019

What's Happening: August 5, 2019, Maine Medical Center

What's Happening

No abstract provided.