Advancing Quality & Patient Safety, a podcast by the New Mexico Hospital Association

Episode 20 of Advancing Quality & Patient Safety: Team Approach to Reducing CDI. This episode features an interview with Kerry Bolin, MSN, NEA-BC, CPHQ, who is the VP Patient Safety and Quality, at Gerald Champion Regional Medical Center in Alamogordo, New Mexico.

Kerry shares with us the wide approach they took to reducing CDI in their hospital including process improvements in antimicrobial stewardship, lab stewardship, & environmental cleaning to ensure safe care for every patient.

Lastly, Kerry shares with us her insight on leading an initiative that involves multiple disciplines & clinical departments.

Episode 19 features an interview with Lacey Robinson, Infection Prevention & Employee Health nurse at Miners' Colfax Medical Center in Raton, New Mexico.

Lacey was recently involved with leading a hospital wide initiative that improved their healthcare personnel flu vaccination rates from 67% last flu season to almost 100% this year.

Lacey shares with us creative ideas and solutions to this challenging topic that supports staff and maintains a positive culture of safety.

Lacey also shares with us insights around being a new IP, and how important it is to develop relationships and collaborate with physician leaders and administration.

 Today's episode features an interview with Rennie Mariscal, Physician Practice Administrator & Director of Case Management and Amanda Pryor, Interim Director of Case Management from Gila Regional Medical Center (Silver City, NM).

They shared their efforts and successes with a comprehensive care transitions program that included multidisciplinary collaboration and  community partnerships.

Episode 18 of Advancing Quality & Patient Safety: Partnering to Reduce Hospital Readmissions. This episode features an interview with Wendi Hulett, Chief Nurse Executive at Lincoln County Medical Center in Ruidoso, New Mexico. LCMC was the winner of the top rural/critical access and overall top hospital categories for the 2019 NMHA Quest for Excellence Awards.

Wendi shares with us data-driven approaches the hospital has taken to drive key interventions with reducing hospital readmissions to as low as 2.2%. She shares with us the multidisciplinary approaches taken at the hospital, along with partnerships established with local EMS to conduct home visits post hospital discharge.

Lastly, Wendi shares with the important modifications they made to their in-hospital questionnaire, to help them gain a better patient and family perspective.

Episode 17 features an interview with Megan VanNatta, Director of Compliance, Christina Salazar Director of Nursing, & Jennifer Risley Director of Therapy with the national recognized inpatient rehabilitation facility, The Rehabilitation Hospital of Southern New Mexico. This hospital was the winner of the NMHA's Quest for Excellence Award in 2019 as the top specialty hospital.

The leadership team shares with us a program recently developed at the hospital to service spinal cord injury survivors with successful reintegration into their community. The interdisciplinary team at the hospital adopted validated clinical practice guidelines, along with standardized care management processes to help spinal cord injury patients regain functional independence and return to their daily activities.

We learn from the hospital the importance of partnering with patients and families from day one of the hospital stay, setting shared goals with them, and most notably, always asking the patient what is most important them.  Lastly, we highlight the hospital’s commitment to patients post-discharge with programs they have developed such as community support groups.

Episode 16 of Advancing Quality & Patient Safety features an interview with Kelly Garland, Quality Coordinator, & Erin Martin,  Chief Quality Officer, at MountainView Regional Medical Center in Las Cruces.

Kelly & Erin share with us a multidisciplinary huddle that occurs in their hospital. What sets this huddle apart from most is its focus on documentation accuracy and coding in real-time. We learn from MountainView the importance of the message “ if isn’t codable documentation, it didn’t happen.”

They also share with us the widespread learning that occurs in their hospital with real-time root cause analysis at the unit level combined with unit led improvements in clinical care processes.

MountainView Regional Medical Center, the winner of the 2019 NMHA Quest for Excellence Top General Acute Care Hospital, exemplifies the importance of physician leadership, nurse-driven improvements, and a culture of safety to improve documentation & clinical care. 

Episode 15 of Advancing Quality & Patient Safety features an interview with Paula Bustillos, the Quality Program Coordinator with UNM Sandoval Regional Medical Center on the topic of hospital certification programs.

Paula shares insights and guidance on the hospital certification process and uses recent examples as she led her hospital through the Bariatric Surgery Certification.

She teaches us the similarities & differences with hospital certification & accreditation, the team you need to assemble when pursuing certification, data abstraction & metrics, and how to engage and facilitate standardization to evidence-based practice.

Episode 14 of Advancing Quality & Patient Safety features an interview with Dr. Robert Underwood, Chief Medical Officer at San Juan Regional Medical Center.

Dr. Underwood is in the process of writing a book on physician leadership, and he shares with us key insights and lessons from his book. 

Dr. Underwood covers the topics how to identify good potential leaders at your organization, distinguishing between formal & informal leaders, and how to develop and apply a leadership philosophy when leading teams at your hospital.

Episode 13 of Advancing Quality & Patient Safety: Leading Large-Scale Performance Improvement. This episode features an interview with Marie Cleary- Fishman , AHA's VP for Clinical Quality.  Marie will also be speaking at NMHA's 2019 Annual Meeting during the Quality Awards Ceremony.

Marie talks with us about transitions quality leaders need to make when leading large-scale improvement project, whether it is spreading improvement across a hospital or multiple hospitals.

Marie shares insights on various change management strategies, data analysis,  and engaging stakeholders at all levels when facilitating improvement.

Lastly, Marie shares lesson learned from her career in quality and stories about important mentors shes had along the way.

 Episode 12 of Advancing Quality & Patient Safety: Solutions for Nursing Leader Burnout. This episode features an interview with Sharon Radcliffe, the Chief Nursing Officer at Los Alamos Medical Center.

Sharon is in process of completing her Doctor of Nursing Practice degree, and part of that involves a doctoral thesis capstone project. Sharon chose to research nurse leaders across the country on the topic burnout.

She shares results of that research and gives ideas and solutions around this popular topic in healthcare.

Sharon also importance of continuous learning as a health care leader, and why pursuing the advanced degree in nursing as helped further her passion for nursing leadership.