Memorial Healthcare: Shared Vision - Health Executive - RedCoat Publishing - Inside Healthcare

ne of a hospital’s primary missions is to serve its community. For independent community hospital Memorial Healthcare, it’s the only mission, but sometimes its fulfillment requires a new relationship to be forged.

Cheryl Peterson, CEO

In 2006, when looking at the growing population of uninsured and underinsured in Shiawassee County, Michigan-based Memorial Healthcare decided to live its mission by developing a community health center. With no former experience with such a development, the hospital looked for a local partner and found a willing collaborator in the Health and Human Services Council. The group includes representatives from the hospital and other community agencies focused on providing healthcare solutions.

“We all had identified a need for access to care for uninsured and underinsured populations,” Cheryl Peterson, CEO of Memorial Healthcare said. “As we explored what could be done, we came to the knowledge of a federally qualified healthcare center (FQHC) and, through the process, received approval to develop one.”

Needing a specialist familiar with FQHCs, the organizations looked for a partner capable of bringing the center concept to fruition. They identified Health Delivery, Inc., a Michigan-based organization with years of experience in providing health services to all members of its community, no matter their ability to pay.

In late 2007, the Mobile Medical Unit opened on a two-day a week basis adjacent to one of Memorial Healthcare’s physician office sites. By the middle of 2008, Peterson said, the separate 501 (c) 3 will be in its permanent home under the name Shiawassee Community Health Center. Dollars from the community health center will flow to Health Delivery, and the hospital will assist with some of the start-up costs.

From the start
When Peterson became CEO in 2004, she discovered her vision to expand Memorial Healthcare’s services was shared by the hospital’s board of trustees. Although the development of the Mobile Medical Unit did support that vision, after looking at the hospital’s strategic plan and other opportunities, Peterson and her team realized more needed to be done.

The hospital provided cancer care for many years within its walls, such as chemotherapy and infusion services, but it had never expanded its services to include onsite radiation therapy. “We looked at our community and saw an aging population,” said Peterson. “When you think about the needs of an aging population, cancer certainly comes to mind. There was an opportunity to develop a more comprehensive cancer center by adding radiation therapy to the services already being offered.”

Without enough room to add those services in the hospital, the administration decided to relocate existing cancer services to a separate location capable of also housing radiation services. After sending out an RFP to select a partner for radiation therapy, Memorial Healthcare selected Flint-based McLaren Regional Medical Center. The partnership guarantees, for the first time in its history, radiation therapies will be available in the immediate community.

In addition to the inherent clinical benefits, the cancer center will also provide a healing, stress reducing environment for its patients and families. Healing gardens surround the center, which has large window/door walls for patients to have a relaxing view while receiving treatment. Patients can also open the door walls and walk directly into the gardens.

“There was a high level of interest here on the part of our clinicians to incorporate healing environment aspects into the cancer center,” Peterson said. “The staff will be multi-disciplinary as far as social work staff and pastoral staff, providing the opportunity to assist patients and their families as appropriate to their treatment plan.”

Independent progress
Memorial Healthcare is also on the ball from an IT perspective. In early 2007, the hospital began EMR implementation in its physician offices and has already initiated bedside medication verification and bedside registration in the ED. On a larger scale, the hospital also implemented a patient tracking system, HC-Integrator, in its diagnostic center and surgical department.

The technology allows staff to track a patient from registration to check out, as well as integrating the medical records from each department, which means when a patient goes to the hospital needing lab draws, a routine X-ray, or a mammogram, the staff in all three departments can see where that patient is in the system. If a patient is in the lab area with two other patients, the stenographer and mammographer can go over, get that patient, perform a different part of the patient’s visit first, and then bring the patient back to the lab area to minimize wait time.

“HC Integrator has allowed us to achieve shorter wait times,” Peterson said. “For example, wait time for a lab is three minutes in our diagnostic center and six minutes for a mammography exam in our diagnostic center. We’ve seen such good results with it that we moved it into our surgical waiting area, not necessarily for the same purpose, but more for the families.”

The system displays a patient’s progress through a color-coded system displayed on a board in the waiting room. Families will see when the patient is in the OR, when the case has begun, when it has ended, and when the patient is being transported to recovery. Although it’s still too soon to see the results of the surgical installation (it was completed in late November), Peterson said families have already responded positively, which means the hospital’s mission to serve its community is now a reality.

“A benefit to being an independent community hospital is that decisions are made here in the local community, close to patients,” Peterson said. “And our governing board comprises community members who allow us to make those good decisions about healthcare issues, as well as directing us in how to proceed in addressing healthcare issues locally.”

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