Creating Wow! moments for our patients      

I want to begin this week with another Wow! moment for our patients made possible by your commitment to putting the patient at the center of all we do. This one is from 5 East where they were dealing with a patient who faced numerous challenges including the inability to communicate.  Our Child Life Specialist, Frances Wood, was involved in helping with interventions to make this young patient feel more in control. As a surprise, she arranged for a visit to Life Flight with the patient and a parent. The patient had seen the helicopter land and was very excited by the spectacle. Of course this was not lost on our caregivers. Frances thought it would be a unique opportunity to give this patient a close up view. The Life Flight staff was very accommodating and the smile on this young patient’s face made it all worth the effort.

That was submitted by Cathy Guadagnoli, an RN on 5 East. Thanks for bringing this story to our attention Cathy. Remember, I want to hear your Wow! stories. We have created this email address wow@umassmemorial.org for you to share them. Please include the name of the person and unit creating the Wow! moment, and as much detail as possible. We will highlight some of these stories in our upcoming blog posts.

Virtual visits era begins          

The delivery of health care is constantly changing, worldwide yes, but right here at UMass Memorial especially. Starting today we are now offering a new “virtual” health care service called e-Visit that will offer diagnosis and treatment of common health care conditions such as sinus infections, female bladder infections, pink eye, colds and flu to eligible patients by connecting them with UMass Memorial providers through an interactive electronic system available 24 hours a day. 

In its initial phase e-Visit will be available ONLY to UMass Memorial Health Care system employees and their covered dependents who have Medical Group physicians, and who get their health insurance through one of our health care plans (employees who take part in the Fallon Direct plan are not eligible at this time).The service will be offered free of charge.  We will assess the results of the e-Visit pilot, and based on these findings, determine if we will offer the service more broadly.

Users start their virtual medical visit by signing into the secure e-Visit website and completing an online interview, detailing symptoms, medical history and other information. Using the latest evidence-based medical guidelines to elicit the appropriate information, the “virtual visit” takes less than five minutes to complete.  The service will be accessible 24 hours a day, with provider diagnosis and treatment available 7 am to 10 pm daily.  After hours, requests will receive a priority response the following morning.  A specially trained team of our Emergency Medicine providers will provide the virtual care. Employees should look for specifics on accessing e-Visit in upcoming internal communications.

To read more, please see Worcester Business Journal article, highlighting the service.
https://nebusinessmedia.uberflip.com/i/572344-health-september-21-2015/22

Idea of the Week

This one is from UMass Memorial – Marlborough Hospital. The physical therapy department there was made aware of a discrepancy between the pieces of equipment distributed to patients and the total inventory. This is an automated process so that whenever equipment is distributed to a patient, a form is filled out so the patient’s insurance can be billed.  When the paperwork is incomplete or missing, the PT department at Marlborough Hospital is billed for the piece of equipment.

Karen Maloney, PTA, and Brenda Mack, MPT, designed an inventory sheet to track equipment and forms daily. When caregivers distribute a piece of equipment, they indicate so on the tracking form. In addition the team requested their equipment vendor leave a list of what items are dropped off so that it can be added to the inventory and allow for better tracking. Now, if inventory is a little off one day the team can follow up with the caregivers who worked the previous day to find out if they distributed any equipment. The team also installed separate baskets for blank forms, completed forms, and equipment delivered so that paperwork doesn’t get misplaced. This will prevent having to pay for missing equipment.  Well done!

You can now find the Idea of the Week archive by clicking the Idea System tab at the top of this page.

Thanks for all your great ideas and for taking great care of our patients and one another,

Eric