Dear Colleagues,
MU Health Care and the MU School of Medicine recently received $500,000 from the Patient Centered Outcomes Research Institute (PCORI) to support improvements in health care delivery. We were one of roughly 40 institutions nationwide to receive these funds.
Dr. Anne Sales, an implementation science expert together with Chief Medical Officer Dr. Stevan Whitt and Chief Nursing Executive Shanon Fucik helped secure the funding to restructure the Tier 1 Huddles held across the health system.
After months of planning, education and implementation, I joined Shanon on a visit to the newly configured Tier 1 Huddle inside the pediatric intensive care unit (PICU) at Children’s Hospital.
Core charge nurse Ashley Hubbard led the huddle with clinical nurse manager Madison Scott and pediatrics clinical nurse manager Macy Walquist also present. It’s important for the PICU and pediatrics units to work closely together as patients are frequently going back and forth between the units.
Ashley began the huddle by first announcing new faces in the group and introduced me and Shanon as visitors for the huddle. Ashley then followed the huddle scripting to address the daily acuity which covered the census and other metrics, she read announcements which included a switch of tube feeding products, then discussed a focus on having all IV tubing correctly dated. The attention turned to a challenge involving the wall sanitizers.
I was impressed by the participation of physician residents, who joined the huddle to provide another important perspective to the discussions. Within a couple of minutes, the huddle closed with celebrations, including one that nurse Abby Hake had recently completed the St. Jude Memphis Marathon and received 2nd place! We ended the huddle with my request to take a group picture.
I was very grateful to be part of this important daily activity, and I’m also appreciative of the leadership that Shanon, Dr. Whitt and Dr. Sales provided to help secure the funding that put the wheels in motion to improve the way MU Health Care saves and improves lives through exemplary research, education and patient care. This is a great example of the type of patient-centered research that has definite practical implications that we want to pursue at the University of Missouri.
It was a pleasure to watch our skilled care providers put this plan into action.
Congratulations!
Rick Barohn, MD
Executive Vice Chancellor for Health Affairs and Hugh E. and Sarah D. Stephenson Dean, School of Medicine
rbarohn@health.missouri.edu
