THESURGE THE PRESIDENT A MESSAGE FROM TABLE OF CONTENTS

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1 Fall 2016 THESURGE A SURGICAL NEWSLETTER FOR UH ST. JOHN MEDICAL CENTER SURGEONS A MESSAGE FROM THE PRESIDENT Robert G. David, CPA President and Chief Experience Officer UH St. John Medical Center, a Catholic hospital TABLE OF CONTENTS Meet the Team A Message from a New Colon and Rectal Surgeon A Message from a New Otolaryngologist Chief Nursing Officer Director of Perioperative & Maternity Services Acting Manager of Surgery Chief of Surgery Welcome to the second installment of The Surge. When we introduced the inaugural issue in August, I received an enormous amount of positive feedback from UH St. John Medical Center surgeons as well as leaders from across the system. I was even asked to present the newsletter to my fellow hospital presidents so they could consider implementing similar communications at their facilities. It is my goal to provide UH St. John Medical Center surgeons the safest, most efficient operating rooms possible that are easy to schedule and welcoming to patients, family, physicians and staff. As you ll see when you read the messages within this issue of The Surge, not only am I committed to investing in the equipment and infrastructure necessary to reach my goal, but great strides have already been taken. As always, my door is open, and I welcome conversations with you at any time. Please call my cell phone at or schedule a meeting through my assistant, Kelly Butterfield, at Chief of Anesthesiology

2 MEET THE TEAM Please join me in welcoming the following new members of UH St. John Medical Center s OR staff. Theresa Duke, ADN, CNOR, RNFA Theresa specializes in cardiothoracic surgery. She comes to us from Mercy Regional Medical Center in Lorain, where for the past seven years she assisted in all specialties. Prior to that, Theresa spent two years as a cardiac transplant coordinator at UH and 15 years at the Cleveland Clinic in the cardiac surgery department. Desiree Jenkins, SA Desiree specializes in general surgery, gynecology, cosmetic surgery and ophthalmology. She has worked in many facilities throughout both Cleveland and Akron, including Barberton Hospital, The Surgery Center in Middleburg Heights, Summa Health System and The Surgery Center in Medina. Now that Desiree is a member of the UH St. John Medical Center OR team, she is excited to learn additional service lines. AGENCY STAFF Hilary Davis, RN Hilary, an operating room nurse from Cleveland, will be with us until November She has more than 25 years of experience and has worked mostly downtown at UH Cleveland Medical Center, Louis Stokes Cleveland VA Medical Center and Cleveland Clinic s main campus. Her experience includes work at hospitals in Louisiana as well. Shaun Ortega, SA Shaun brings more than 15 years of experience as a surgical assistant to our team. He specializes in spine and orthopedics, but he has neurological experience as well. AGENCY STAFF Brian Barker, CST Brian is a Navy-trained surgical technologist. He has more than 26 years of experience and has worked in 40+ hospitals across the country. Brian has experience in most service lines and enjoys the variety of specialties he has been exposed to during his career. AGENCY STAFF Teresa Smith, RN Teresa became a registered nurse in 1993, and since then she has spent most of her career as a traveling nurse. Her experience has taken her beyond Ohio to Wisconsin, Colorado, Texas, Arizona, Nevada, Connecticut, Virginia, South Carolina and Washington, DC. When not traveling, Teresa works at West Central Surgery Center in Toledo. She will be with us through November The Surge UHhospitals.org 2

3 A MESSAGE FROM A COLON AND RECTAL SURGEON Thank you for this opportunity to formally introduce myself. I was born and raised not far from UH St. John Medical Center in Fairview Park. I am a member of St. Angela s Parish and graduated from St. Ignatius High School. Tim O Donnell, MD After attending Georgetown University Medical School, I completed training in general surgery at Tulane University in New Orleans, Louisiana. I subsequently completed a colon and rectal fellowship at Baylor University in Dallas, Texas. I have been practicing in western Pennsylvania for the past eight years as a general and colorectal surgeon. My children s educational opportunities ultimately are bringing me home to the Westside of Cleveland, where I will be practicing in the UH St. John Medical Center Surgical Group primarily as a colon and rectal surgeon. I have been married to my wife, Brooke, for 18 years and have two children, Sean (14) and Megan (12). I look forward to the move home for many reasons. The Westside of Cleveland still holds so many great memories of my early life, and I hope to share them with my wife and children. I have returned frequently over the years to visit family and friends who have remained in Cleveland and have never stopped thinking this would be my ultimate destination. UH St. John Medical Center s excellent hospital system and strong leadership were apparent from the beginning of my search, and I hope to be able to assist in the further growth of this great facility. Although my general and colorectal practice for the past 14 years has been all inclusive, I hope to make a true difference for our surrounding communities in providing treatment of benign and malignant conditions of the colon and rectum. I also share a keen interest in the treatment of benign anorectal conditions. I hope to assist in the care of all our patients with these conditions in the office, outpatient and inpatient settings. Additionally, I am excited to take care of patients along with the dedicated staff in the operating room, as well as throughout the hospital, in the Catholic tradition on which UH St. John Medical Center was founded. I am truly looking forward to this opportunity to return home and participate in this great hospital system. There are many things I can bring to your hospital, and I eagerly anticipate discussing them with you in the near future. The Surge UHhospitals.org 3

4 A Message from a New Otolaryngologist Nipun Chhabra, MD Greetings, colleagues. I am excited to join you in providing the highest level of care to our patients. Having recently relocated to Cleveland, I am excited to return to the community in which I trained. Upon graduation from Duke University, I spent one year abroad as a Fulbright Scholar in South Korea. I received my medical degree from George Washington University, where I was elected to the Alpha Omega Alpha Honor Society for academic achievement. My residency in Otolaryngology Head & Neck Surgery was completed at University Hospitals Cleveland Medical Center, followed by a fellowship in Rhinology and Endoscopic Skull Base Surgery from the Massachusetts Eye & Ear Infirmary of Harvard Medical School in Boston. There, I acquired advanced training in nasal and sinus disorders and minimally invasive approaches to the skull base. I previously held faculty appointments at both the University of Illinois College of Medicine and Rush University Medical Center, and am board-certified by the American Board of Otolaryngology. Providing compassionate care and creating partnerships with patients is my passion. When not working, I enjoy practicing martial arts and spending time with my wife and two young children in Avon. I appreciate this opportunity to introduce myself and look forward to working with all of you. Chief Nursing Officer Cathy A. Knorzer, RNC, MSN, CNP, NEA-BC Since joining UH St. John Medical Center on September 12, I have had the pleasure of meeting many of you and I look forward to introducing myself to those I have not yet met. Thank you for the opportunity to tell you a little bit about myself and my goals as Chief Nursing Officer. I am a native of Northeast Ohio and received my nursing education here. I graduated from the Trumbull Memorial Hospital School of Nursing and received my bachelor s degree in nursing from the University of Akron. Later, I returned to school to earn my master s degree in nursing and women s health and nurse practitioner certification from Kent State University. Akron Children s Hospital is where I began my career, and over the past 30 years, I have held several leadership positions with increasing responsibilities. Most recently, I held the role of Assistant Vice President, Patient Care Services, for Carolinas Healthcare System in Charlotte, North Carolina. For many reasons, I m thrilled that the opportunity to become the Chief Nursing Officer at UH St. John Medical Center presented itself. In addition to allowing me to return to my home state, this position has enabled me to rejoin the University Hospitals family. I served as Chief Nursing Officer at UH Geneva Medical Center from 2008 to 2011, where I focused on patient satisfaction and helped the hospital reach the 90th percentile nationally. Here at UH St. John Medical Center, I am determined to bring best practices from my previous positions to assist us in meeting and exceeding our goals in patient satisfaction and quality. Additionally, I am focused on building relationships with physicians and integrating those relationships with both our nurses and our patients. I welcome your thoughts and feedback on how we can best work together to reach our common goals. Please stop by my office or contact me at I look forward to collaborating with you on many initiatives in the months and years to come. The Surge UHhospitals.org 4

5 A MESSAGE FROM THE DIRECTOR OF PERIOPERATIVE AND MATERNITY SERVICES As mentioned in the first issue of The Surge, we have been purchasing new instrumentation that addresses the needs outlined by the surgeons of UH St. John Medical Center. Jodi Burdon, DNP, MSN, RN Thus far, we have upgraded to the new Myosure generator GYN cases; upgraded to the Aqulix pump for GYN hysteroscopies; purchased a new Novasure system for uterine ablations; acquired new Silver Glide bipolar forceps for neurological cases; installed a new hood system for total joint replacement cases; purchased two upgraded open heart trays and two new vascular instrument trays; and added extra ring stands for the OR. In addition to the purchases mentioned above, we have made process improvements to the OR. We have expanded the storage area for sterile trays and have added a total of 50 one tray systems. We plan to request another one tray system before the end of this year. While we are still recruiting for a nurse manager for the OR, we have been very successful in recruiting new staff for the department. In fact, we expect to have all open positions in the OR filled by December 31, thereby eliminating all agency contracts within the OR. We ve filled the new staff educator position with Veronica Yacobucci. She has been working closely with OR leadership and hospital education to develop and conduct inservice training sessions with staff, and to develop a robust educational plan for the OR staff. In addition, we ve reorganized the OR to create two new clinical coordinator positions. These positions are held by Elizabeth Rodriguez and Ginger Kotia. As in the past, the clinical coordinators will work collaboratively with anesthesia and the first assists to ensure efficient daily operations within the OR. We have also moved Chris Lowe into the position of service line coordinator. In this role she will focus on specialty service lines and will work closely with the reps and Adam Mihalic to ensure that all appropriate supplies and equipment are available to us on a daily basis. Lastly, we have been working with the anesthesia group on improving coverage. We will begin routinely running eight ORs soon and anticipate expanding to nine ORs by year s end. The Surge UHhospitals.org 5

6 A MESSAGE FROM THE ACTING MANAGER OF SURGERY There continues to be great progress in the surgery department at UH St. John Medical Center. The operating room has successfully filled all the open positions with talented and engaged new employees. Jeffrey Reilly, BSN, MBA As the new hires go through a rigorous orientation with our new staff educator and clinical coordinators, we are actively working with the anesthesia department on staffing to cover all the areas we need and expand the number of ORs we run daily. Once they are fully staffed, we will be running eight ORs every day as well as two endoscopy suites. UH is actively supporting the volume growth by allocating capital for additional equipment needed in the surgery department. We have already received much-needed new equipment and instrument trays with more in process. We continue to improve our processes and hard wire operational procedures improving quality of care and efficiencies. We have seen a significant improvement in on-time starts and turnover times, and our clinical coordinators have done a great job dealing with changes in schedules and add-on emergencies to keep schedules on time. Improvements in block time and scheduling have had a big impact on physician office staff satisfaction. Our newly created position of OR equipment coordinator ensures every day we have the specialty equipment needed to execute procedures. All these improvements have resulted in an influx of requests by new and existing surgeons for more block time to complete cases. Since the Joint Commission survey and DOH visit in May, we have hard wired processes and successfully gone through two validation surveys with no issues in the OR. We continue to work closely with the quality department to improve performance and enhance the quality of care provided at UH St. John Medical Center. In the endoscopy department, we are awaiting a new scope washer, which is on order, to standardize the cleaning process and improve efficiencies. With the anesthesia department adding staff, we will be switching to all MAC anesthesia in endoscopy and implementing a new process to improve efficiencies and reduce turnover times between cases to compete with freestanding centers. Endoscopy volumes continue to grow as more physicians are joining the team. The next steps are to continue to improve ontime starts and turnover time. We are working with all departments on achieving the new 25th percentile staffing targets. Another priority is training and education of staff on changes in new processes and procedures, as well as building expertise so our surgeons are fully supported by the best trained staff in the area. We are excited about the changes in surgical services at UH St. John Medical Center and continue to build a great team to meet the challenges of tomorrow. The Surge UHhospitals.org 6

7 A Message from the Chief of Surgery Stephen B. Evans Jr., MD The initiatives we have outlined to improve the efficiency and effectiveness of our operating rooms remain a top priority of the surgery department. New sinks, instruments and one tray systems as well as the recruitment of talented staff have positively impacted the overall flow of the OR and improved the care we provide our patients. Please remember that, as surgeons, it is our responsibility to be on time for the OR, as this helps maintain the OR schedule and process for our patients, staff and fellow surgeons. I would like to thank all of the staff members who participated in the annual UH OR safety conference recently. We had great participation from all of our involved departments. A reminder: The FUSE didactics are available online free of charge and are very worthwhile. And, last but not least, I would like to extend a warm welcome to UH St. John Medical Center s new Chief Nursing Officer, Cathy Knorzer, as well as new colorectal surgeon Tim O Donnell, MD. Chief of Anesthesiology Jeremy Hoban, MD In the inaugural issue of this newsletter, I reviewed the numerous blocks offered by the UH St. John Medical Center anesthesiology department to control intraoperative and postoperative pain. Additionally, I noted the commitment of the anesthesiology department to expanding the number of operating rooms available during normal working hours by recruiting personnel that would allow us to increase capacity. Our efforts have paid off. I m pleased to announce that Paul Eisenberg, MD, has joined our staff. Dr. Eisenberg received his medical degree from Northwestern University in 2008 and completed a three-year residency in anesthesiology at the McGaw Medical Center of Northwestern University in From there, he completed a fellowship in critical care at the Cleveland Clinic Foundation. Presently, Dr. Eisenberg is an assistant professor of anesthesiology and critical care medicine at Case Western Reserve University School of Medicine. The addition of Dr. Eisenberg will allow us to add a ninth operating room to our schedule, and we will continuously evaluate the need for additional rooms. Please join me in welcoming in Dr. Eisenberg to UH St. John Medical Center University Hospitals STJ Your feedback is welcomed and encouraged. Please contact me at (cell) or via my assistant, Kelly Butterfield, at Thank you, Rob David What s New at UH Regional The Hospitals Surge UHhospitals.org 7