Posted 1 week ago

By Kevin Horn

The Box Butte General Hospital (BBGH) Board of Trustees was informed of two BBGH accomplishments that reinforce the hospital’s “Great Things are Happening Here!” tag line during their Monday, July 28 meeting.

The first was an announcement from CEO Dan Griess that Beckenhauer Construction was hosting a Topping Out ceremony on Tuesday, July 29 to celebrate the completion of the steel erection of the new BBGH addition. The final steel beam was to be placed at 12 noon sharp.  “This has been a tradition for the clients of Beckenhauer and they’ve invited our staff to participate,” Mr. Griess said. “Employees have been invited to sign the final piece of steel prior to the ceremony.”

The board was informed of the ceremony during Mr. Griess’ monthly report on progress of the new addition and renovation project. “Zone 1, the north section, will see slab on deck cement work for the 2^nd floor, and then slab on grade cement pour for the ground floor after that,” he continued. “The brick and stone laying will take about 100 days, from what I understand. Everything is going very well and seems to be on time. Hot water heaters are in place, and next week they’ll start work on installing the new boilers.”

The other accomplishment Mr. Griess highlighted was the latest Hospital Consumer Assessment of Healthcare Providers and Systems (HCAHPS) scores for the April through June 2014 timeframe. “This is a national survey, with every patient that is an in-patient 18 and older asked to complete the survey,” he said. “As do most hospitals, we get about a 10 percent return rate so that makes it hard to generate numbers that are statistically viable, but even so we do get a very good indication of the direction our hospital is taking.” He said the latest survey showed significant increases in the Rate Hospital 0-10 and the Recommend Hospital domains, and continued impressive rankings in other domains as well. “We jumped to the 91 percentile in the Recommend Hospital domain.”

“Other domains of note include Communication with Nurses, in the 98 percentile,” he continued, “as are several others such as pain management Communication with Doctors. Our goal for our hospital is to be ranked in the 95th percentile in all of these domains or higher. As you can see by the trend charts, we are seeing steady improvements in almost all our domains to reach that goal.”

The board also conducted the following business.

The Trustees recognized Melanie Johnston for being named the July Employee of the Month by her peers, as well as Dr. Vic Fattig for being named the 2014 Provider of Choice for the 2^nd Quarter. Austin Sheldon, PT, DPT, OCS, was recognized for obtaining his Orthopedic Certified Specialist credentialing. Also introduced was Carolyn Jones, who was recently named the new Chief Nursing Officer, replacing long time CNO Jane McConkey, who is retiring. Candace Benham, Diagnostic Imaging was recognized for obtaining her Vascular Technology Registry. New employees were also introduced, including: Kara Pruneda, BSRT, RT(R)(MR)(CT), Diagnostic Imaging; Charley Pile, RN, PCU House Supervisor; Amy Scherbarth, RN; Jessica Cuny, Certified Dialysis Tech; Lona Fonville, Customer Service Representative.

After unanimously approving the consent calendar, Mr. Griess gave his Governance/Strategy Focus. He said that the month will begin a 10-module journey of Governance education for the board on the subject of “Eliminating Harm, Improving Patient Care: A Trustee Guide.” The resource is provided by the American Hospital Association, Health Research & Educational Trust, and Center for Healthcare Governance and Trustee Magazine, as part of the Partnership for Patients’ Hospital Engagement Network Initiative.

Under New Business, the Trustees heard Health Information Management (HIM) Department Manager Claudia Olafson present the findings of the latest Inpatient and Outpatient Coding Compliance Audit performed in May by Kforce Healthcare, Inc. The audit reviewed 100 admissions to determine the accuracy of coding in Inpatient Medicare Severity Diagnosis Related Groups (MS-DRG) and Coding Validation Review; Emergency Department services, outpatient clinical visits observation and outpatient surgery cases. “According to the American Health Information Management Association Journal, a realistic, achievable and acceptable level for MS-DRG and overall coding accuracy is 95 percent,” she said. “Accuracy rates for each category for this review were: MS-DRG Accuracy 95 percent; Outpatient (Observations, Outpatient Surgery) Accuracy 99 percent; and Outpatient Clinic Accuracy 91.2 percent (we had a relatively new coder so this was very good for her first review).”

Box Butte Health Foundation (BBHF) Director Brooke Shelmadine was present to request approval of three new BBHF board members. She recommended Molly McConkey-Vergil, Kathy Worley and Megan Spargo, all of whom meet eligibility requirements. The board unanimously approved appointing the three individuals.

COO Lori Mazanec provided an update of the Centriq migration, which started about 18 months ago. Centriq is the new Hospital Information System (HIS) developed by Healthland. The financial part of the system started to be built in March and the clinical part of the system was started first week of June, including all of nursing and all ancillary departments such as lab, radiology, and all the rehab departments. “Healthland is training our Super User staff, who will become trainers for other staff,” Ms. Mazanec said. “The next step is integrated testing, testing our processes to make sure the outcomes are what we want them to be. Right before we go live, we’ll do parallel testing involving a live environment using both our classic and Centriq system testing actual patients side by side to make sure the results are the same in both products.” She said 13 physicians and providers were introduced to the system in mid-July, which allowed them to express their concerns, ask questions and to also provide suggestions on how to make the system work best for them. Build work for the Greater Nebraska & Surgical Services information systems started this week, with three full days of build work planned. “IT staff has been very busy, making sure all the servers are in place and all software is working, “Ms. Mazanec said. “Our go live date is September 8.” She concluded her update by saying everyone has worked well together during this major project.

Mr. Griess informed the board that the annual Employee Picnic will be held Friday, August 1, at Central Park. The meal will begin at 6:00pm. He invited the board to attend and bring a guest or guests.

After the Trustees approved all credentialing requests unanimously, the board set the next meeting for Monday, August 25, with the public invited to attend as always. The meeting was adjourned at 8:10 p.m.