2008-2009 Annual & Community Report
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2008-2009 Annual & Community Report High-tech care…hometown touch Our Vision To be the Best Community Hospital and Health System in New England To Our Community… I can’t believe a year has passed since I last using the Baldrige Criteria for Performance addressed you through this Annual Report. Excellence. The assessment was very This last year saw Rutland Regional Medical comprehensive and provided a clear view of Center continue its progress toward Our Rutland Regional’s strengths and opportunities Vision “to be the Best Community Hospital for improvement. This information is and Health System in New England.” I will extremely useful as we strive to work together share with you many of the year’s happenings to continuously improve our organization for that are leading us closer to this vision. our patients, providers, staff and community. It’s impossible to discuss In order to become the best Our Vision without talking community hospital and about the core of our health system in New organizational direction, England we have five goals which is our key customers that will help us get there. – providers and payers, but They are quality, growth, especially our patients. information excellence, They are the very reason financial strength and we have been serving our employer of choice. I want community for more than to take a minute to tell you one hundred years. To what we are doing around ensure that Rutland each goal. Regional remains a vital asset to the community we Within Quality we conducted have been utilizing the and implemented several Baldrige National Quality performance improvement Program to track our projects. You can read more progress toward Our Vision. about these projects within We are calling this our Journey to Excellence. our Year in Review. To improve the facilities we did construction projects in the Although we are committed to succeeding in Diabetes Center, Women’s and Children’s Unit this journey and earning this award, that and in the Operating Room. In this report you award is just a benchmark for tracking our will also see the additional providers we have progress toward meeting what is really recruited to the community and their specialty. important – the needs of our customers. This Journey to Excellence is about improving For Growth we added several new services all aspects of our business. Even when we such as the Behavioral Health Clinic, TM win this award it will not be the end of our complementary medicine, the GreenLight journey. It would be one road sign along process Dr. Bove is doing for men’s prostate the way as we look forward to future health and a new procedure by Vermont improvements and accomplishments. Orthopaedic Clinic involving resurfacing of the hip. As part of this Journey to Excellence, a team of 35 people (including three individuals Our newest goal is Information Excellence. from outside Rutland Regional) completed The best example of this goal is our work the fourth assessment of our organization toward obtaining a Hospital Information System (HIS). This system will move us Rutland Regional in funding many programs toward an electronic medical record and a and services. more coordinated system of providing care to The final goal necessary to meet Our Vision is our patients. This work is highlighted in the to be an Employer of Choice. This means Year in Review. creating an environment where employees When we talk about our goal around Financial trust those they work for; enjoy those they Strength we all know the economic climate work with; take pride in what they do; and continues to be a tough one. We are have an opportunity to grow. We take this goal continuing to monitor the economy and its very seriously. One way we can tell if we are impact on the hospital very carefully. There doing a good job in this area is by surveying are two possible impacts that we face. The our staff. We conducted our Employee first is on operations. So far, we have not seen Perspectives Survey this past fall and are a significant impact on our operating revenue reviewing the results. One result that we are and volumes. Through the first five months of very proud of is our overall mean score of fiscal year 2009 our profit from operations is 67.3%. This is an increase of 2.4 points from at 4.3% against a budget of 3.6%. We are very the last survey. That is terrific news! We are happy to be ahead of our predictions. This is now thinking about what to work on for the thanks to the hard work of all our providers hospital and at the department level to keep and staff. We will continue to monitor this this positive trend moving. On the hospital very closely, and there are departments wide level one of the things we will continue that are down more than that. We must to focus on is Leadership Listening along with continue to make adjustments to maintain revamping the performance appraisal process. productivity, but this is a smaller impact so Department specific initiatives will vary but far than we had feared. we will focus on them as well. The second impact that we faced was on the It is our staff who make this organization an capital purchasing side of things (equipment asset to the community. Together we know and facilities). We have had to slow down our we can achieve Our Vision. In this report you purchases in this area significantly. We have will see a list of this year’s staff who are reduced our capital budget from $10 million celebrating milestone anniversaries. I appreciate down to approximately $6 million in order to your taking the time to read Rutland preserve cash and to be conservative while we Regional’s Annual & Community Report. watch the current economic situation unfold. Hospitals across the country are having trouble borrowing money for purchases and we fare no differently, so we need to be careful on capital spending for the foreseeable future. All of this may be subject to change as we Thomas W. Huebner, President watch the economy very closely to see how it Rutland Regional Health Services and affects Rutland Regional. We must remember Rutland Regional Medical Center that, no matter what, our mission is to serve our community and keep our patients’ needs at the forefront. In these tough times we are even more grateful for the support of the Rutland Health Foundation and the Rutland Regional Medical Center Auxiliary for their contributions to The Year in Review Rutland Regional had many accomplishments if she would do it again she said she definitely this past year and we’d like to share a few of would. Debbie’s name will remain in the them with you. registry but she will not be able to donate again until May of 2009. Going Green As the second largest hospital in Vermont, and WACU Receives a Face Lift in alignment with our vision to be the best A construction project in the center of the community hospital and health care system in Women’s and Children’s Unit (WACU) was New England, it is our responsibility to be completed. The goals for the project were to environmentally conscious. brighten the area, ensure better access to the unit, create additional space needed to prepare Our long term goal is to maintain or reduce patient medications, provide private dictation our carbon footprint. The carbon footprint is a space for physicians and enhance overall measure of the impact human activities have confidentiality. The unit remained operational on the environment in terms of the amount of during the project. An open house was held to greenhouse gases produced, measured in units celebrate the unit’s new look. of carbon dioxide. Here are a few of the environmentally Classroom Dedication conscious initiatives that are being considered Last year’s expansion at the Rutland Region and some that have been implemented Diabetes & Endocrinology Center included a recently: natural fertilizer is used on the lawns new Diabetes Classroom dedicated to Diana and gardens, environmentally friendly ice melt Doaner, who passed away in 2007. Diana was is used on all walkways, 50% of outdoor a delightful woman who was diagnosed with holiday lights were LED (light-emitting diode), diabetes when she was 11 years old in 1953. which are more energy efficient and trees are planted yearly. Also, Food and Nutrition At that time treatment and care for people Services changed a process and reduced water with Type 1 Diabetes was limited at best. She consumption by $30,000 per year and our approached Jim Bowse, then CEO of Rutland Environmental Services staff continue to Regional, in 1994 presenting the needs for do a great job coordinating the disposal of education and care for people with diabetes in recyclables (cans, corrugated cardboard, the Rutland area. From there, Rutland newspapers, shredded confidential paper, etc). Regional employee Sarah Narkewicz, RN, started the first diabetes education class and Making a Difference was the first Certified Diabetes Educator in the area. In June of 1995, Philip Lapp, MD, was Debbie Harte, RN, a Rutland Regional hired to be the first endocrinologist in the employee since 1983, became a member of the area. The Diana Doaner Education Classroom National Marrow Donor registry in November was dedicated in June of 2008 in appreciation of 1998. Ten years later she was contacted by of Diana’s visionary role in bringing the National Marrow Donor Program to tell comprehensive diabetes services to the her that she was a potential match for a Rutland Community.