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| Arkansas Heart Hospital: The Good Life |
| Specialized Hosp. | |
| Written by Deborah Geering | |
| Thursday, 01 November 2007 | |
 At Arkansas Heart Hospital, CEO Charlie Smith and his team can attest to the benefits of engaged caregivers and greater physician involvement. Three years later, Smith is still happy to be on the job as the hospital’s CEO. “Coming to Arkansas Heart Hospital was such a unique experience,” he said. “The employees and the doctors are dedicated to providing patients with positive hospital experiences, and they enjoy what they are doing. Seeing the patients smile every day—it’s certainly the most fulfilling job I’ve ever had.”  Charlie Smith, CEO “Our physicians have their vision and expectations of how a hospital should take care of patients, and by partnering with MedCath, they have influence and can make that happen the way they want to,” Smith said. Visit any time Evidence of that influence is all around the hospital, he said. AHH enforces no visiting hours, instead encouraging family members to stay as long as they want. All patient rooms are private and equipped with sleeper sofas in case a family member wants to stay overnight. Once a patient is admitted, he or she is rarely moved around for tests, unless the equipment involved cannot be carried to bedside. “That helps the patient get into the room, get settled, and have consistent staffing,” Smith said. Meanwhile, the employees are happy because of the organization’s collaborative spirit regarding patient care, he said. “The physicians give them a lot of input about what’s going on with the patients, and the nurses give the physicians input, too. They become part of the team.” The nurse-to-patient ratio of 1:3.5 gives the nurses “a lot of room to work with,” he added. The 180 physicians on staff at AHH, whether they are among the 12 physician-partners or not, are far more involved in the patient experience than is the case at most hospitals, he said. “My interaction with physicians is about involving them with organizational and patient-care decisions, like equipment and direction. We have meetings weekly, if not daily, to discuss how the hospital is being managed from a patient-care point of view and a physician point of view. Our primary customer is our patient and the patient’s family, and the doctors are our greatest patient advocates. Physicians regularly stop by the CEO’s office to check in and discuss operational concerns, and Smith strolls through the hospital to visit with employees and patients on a daily basis. “We’re all a team, and really, even past the team concept, we’re a family,” he said. Smith bristles at the common complaint that physician-owned hospitals are overly focused on profit and that they cherry-pick wealthy patients, weakening the financial base of general care facilities. “You would not believe the misconceptions that are out there,” he said. “If we are cherry-picking, then somewhere along the line we flunked cherry-picking school. Our payer mix is the same as any other hospital in the area. We have no financial screening at the hospital. If you have a heart condition, you are admitted.” Arkansas’ “any willing provider” law gives patients the option to choose Arkansas Heart, and Smith noted that patients come from all 75 of the state’s counties. Time to expand The hospital hosts more open-heart surgeries than any other facility in the state, but that’s not all it does. The staff in the full-service ED sees visitors for everything from bumps and bruises to suspected heart attacks. The hospital has six catheterization labs where a variety of services are performed, including angiographies, pacemaker and internal defibrillator installations, electrophysiology studies, and cardiac catheterizations. It offers cardiovascular MRIs and the HeartSaver CT, a noninvasive test that can expose heart disease in less than seven minutes. By 2008, the hospital will have completed its first expansion, opening 28 additional private rooms in a space left incomplete on the third floor when the building was constructed. The expansion brings the total bed count to 112. No matter the reason for their stay, the patients at Arkansas Heart Hospital are more often than not pleased with their care. AHH regularly scores in the top 5% in HCAHPS, the patient satisfaction survey. “All CEOs have to deal with patient satisfaction, but in this hospital, we get 30:1 compliments versus complaints,” said Smith. Smith recalled a moment soon after his arrival when he was given a stack of about 150 patient surveys to review. “I thought, ‘Uh-oh, here it comes,’” he said. “I’m sitting there reading them, and survey after survey, they name the names of people who cared for them and talk about how wonderful the care is. I’m telling you, it will lift your spirits.” He never ceases to be amazed when people in the grocery store or elsewhere in the community recognize his ID badge and stop him to tell of a family member’s pleasant experience at Arkansas Heart. “I feel that we’ve accomplished something when I go home at night,” he said. “You walk around here, and you feel good.” But does it feel better than fishing and golfing in Florida? You bet. “It was a good change and a good opportunity,” Smith said. “Of course, much of my Florida fishing was for golf balls in water hazards.” |
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