The last two weeks have been so event-filled I’ve barely had time to reflect.  But, to keep you up to date, here are some of the things that are on our front burner.

First, we are happy to announce that Prima Medical Group has hired Dr. Scott Perryman, who will begin practicing right after Labor Day. Dr. Perryman recently completed his surgical residency at Stanford University, including a postdoctoral fellowship in stem cell research, and an advanced minimally invasive laparoscopic and bariatric surgery fellowship at Stanford in 2010. He is also a member of multiple surgical societies including the Society of American Gastrointestinal and Endoscopic Surgeons (SAGES), the American Society of Metabolic and Bariatric Surgeons (ASMBS) and the American College of Surgeons (ACS) and has presented his research at the ACS Clinical Congress.  

Highly qualified and sought after, Dr. Perryman chose Sonoma, he told us, because of its scale and because our surgical department has the state of the art equipment that will enable him to continue and grow his laparoscopic surgical practice. He and his surgical partner, Dr. Crystine Lee are both an expert in bariatric surgery, which Dr. Perryman says is a life-changing surgery that not only helps with or eliminates diabetes but improves a patients entire quality of life. SVH will be creating a service line around that specialty in the coming year.

Speaking of lines of service, we are about to unveil our Total Joint Replacement Center of Excellence, headed by Dr. Mike Brown, and guided by Nurse Navigator, Janet Alexander. Key to a patient’s comfortable experience throughout the process, Alexander will be the patients’ “guardian angel” and will personally guide them through the total experience, from preliminary education through physical therapy.
We’re pleased to announce that the Napa State Hospital program has begun. I am truly proud of all of the response of our leadership and staff to this program. This is an opportunity for us to extend our daily care and compassion to others who need our care. While appropriate staff are being specially trained to help these patients, our guideline for all of our staff with regard to these new patients will be the same as with all our patients: Respect. We are proud that Napa State Hospital has chosen us, and we all look forward to providing excellent healthcare to the Napa State patients – as we do all our patients. If you have any questions, click on the link above for an FAQ.

Physically, we’re starting to look good.  Our various remodeling projects have taken off like wildfire. The Skilled Nursing Facility is nearly halfway to their goal of having the funds to makeover all their rooms.  Donations are pouring in, large and small, and several new donors have chosen to sponsor entire rooms. Peter Hohorst just informed me that we now have an eighth donation of $10,000, so now there are only six rooms and the activity room to go.  Helen Fernandez and the committee are elated. All together, we’ve received $90,430 from just 31 donors.  This really does say something about the spirit of Sonoma, the value of the SNF caregivers, and Sonoman’s way of quietly saying, “Thank you.”  We thank you all.

Also, thanks to the Foundation, not only for providing new beds for SNF, but for making possible the remodel of one and a half rooms in the Birthplace are being redone and from 10-20 in Med-Surg. This is real progress.

Progress is contagious. Our staff is energized and working in “culture improvement teams” to improve our performance in nearly every aspect of the Sonoma Valley Hospital experience from the phone greeting on out.  Our board, too, is also energized and has reached out to the Sonoma Valley Community Health Center to get together for a meeting of the minds.  This meeting of the two boards of directors will take place on Tuesday, August 31, at the Firehouse, 630 Second Street West, at 7 pm. The public is welcome.

It really does feel like things are changing around here, all in a good way, all as a way of building on the goodness and character that people love about Sonoma Valley Hospital. We’re just focusing, structuring, getting organized, and helping that character to shine.

Till next time,

Kelly

Kelly Mather, Chief Executive Officer
Sonoma Valley Hospital

Greetings!

In case you missed our board meeting last Thursday, I want to give you a brief review of some of the key concepts I presented to mark our new direction, as we go forward.

First of all, we have developed a new culture model in which mission, vision and values are our touchstones. We will all, as a hospital, maintain a “patients first” standard. Quality and excellence will be the norm and the health of all our community – inside the hospital as well as outside – is our goal. We will measure ourselves on results. And we will report those results to you, at our board meetings, every month.
I think we’re off to a great start. As I said to the Board, we already have the quality.  We have fine physicians and staff and perform high quality medical service by any standard. General excellence is our goal. We have some rough edges, especially with our presentation, our physical atmosphere, and our interface with the public, and we’re addressing those issues. We’ve begun training our leaders in various areas so they can help their staff achieve the standards we all agree are those that should represent Sonoma Valley Hospital.

We’re working, as I mentioned last week, from a “dashboard,” which, if you think of it, is how you keep track, when you’re on a journey – checking your speed, your fuel, the time – so you can stay on course. And that’s how I think of it. We’re on a journey together to make Sonoma Valley Hospital the preferred medical provider in this community.

Our dashboard consists of: Service Excellence – this means patient satisfaction and we are aiming high on this one; Quality – this refers to clinical outcomes and physician satisfaction or generally how well we practice medicine. Again, we are already high and aiming for the very highest level here;  People – this has to do with staff satisfaction and productivity, and we have some work to do here, as I’ve said;  Finance – you all have heard that we’re doing well and we will continue to stay within our budget and improve our performance; Growth – inpatient and outpatient volumes are something I’m taking on personally; and finally, Community – here we want to increase our market share and our community satisfaction. We want Sonoma Valley Hospital to be your hospital.

Speaking of being your hospital, I was fortunate to meet some of our community at the Kiwanis luncheon last week and was gratified to see how interested people are in seeing Sonoma Valley Hospital do well.  After all, it is dreadfully inconvenient, as one person mentioned, when you are ill, to have to go long distances for care. We agree. We’re working to earn your trust, so that you know you can get the care you need, for most of your medical issues, right here.

To that end, we are working hard, as you know, to keep great new physicians coming to Sonoma and settling and working here.  Prima Medical Group has been a great help and partner in that effort. As I explained to someone who asked why it was hard to recruit physicians to Sonoma, it’s not that Sonoma isn’t an attractive place to come and practice, it’s that physicians need a certain income level to stay here. Now, with Prima serving as their employer, they can come and practice medicine without incurring the risk of starting up a whole business on their own. 

We’re proud of our recruitment efforts, proud of Prima Medical Group and proud of all of our doctors, and especially the Orthopedic Center of Excellence we’re developing, with Dr. Brown, who came to us in May. We’re really excited about this program and I’ll tell you more next week!

Sincerely

Kelly

Kelly Mather
President and CEO, Sonoma Valley Hospital

Greetings!
 
By the end of my second week as president and CEO, I have seen many, many good things happening in Sonoma Valley Hospital. When I visited the departments this week, I was delighted to find that the requests for improvement were generally easy to predict, such as raises – which are scheduled for this fall – and recognition. Anyone who’s listened to me knows that recognition is a big part of my style of leadership. I believe that people perform better when they are given responsibility for their areas, held accountable for that, and then praised and rewarded when they show results.  It’s pretty simple, really.
Speaking of recognition, we’ve had some outstanding performances by our staff this week, and I want to share a couple of stories with you.
 
On Wednesday night, a woman was rushed to our ER in cardiac arrest.  Our ER team resuscitated her and was preparing to transfer her to a nearby hospital for specialist care, when she went into cardiac arrest again.  And again! As Dr. Cohen tells it, “She died five times that night.”  But our ER team kept on it, dealt with it, and got her stabilized so she could be transferred safely to where she did indeed have immediate heart surgery, and is now is doing fine.  That is the kind of excitement you usually don’t hear about, and we’d rather not have happen, but when it does, we are so proud of the professionalism and skill of our life-saving ER team.  Hats off to them!
 
And while your hats are off, imagine this:  Earlier in the week, I was awed to learn that our new orthopedic team of Dr. Brown and Dr. Weiss is operating together in harmony – literally!  In an example of the kind of surgical teamwork Sonoma Valley Hospital justifiably boasts about, each surgeon, simultaneously, conducted knee replacement surgery on the same patient – one replacing one knee, and the other, replacing the other. At last report, doctors and patients were doing fine.
 
On another happy note, the Skilled Nursing Facility Makeover reception, on Friday, which Mary Hinse, our dietitian, beautifully laid out with exquisite treats and fine libations, was a great success. The Hal Broderick Healing Garden was packed. I came in early and met Helen Fernandez and Suzanne Brangham for the first time.  Theirs is the kind of spirit that makes Sonoma Valley Hospital special. I proudly offered them a check representing a portion of my first SVH paycheck!  I hope my donation will inspire others to contribute to this great project. We can’t all afford $10,000 to makeover a whole room, but if creating an atmosphere of comfort and solace to those who are healing is a cause that moves you, I urge you to contribute what you can. As Helen says, “No amount is too small, or too large!”
 
Also, this weekend, Sonoma Valley Hospital participated in the annual Relay for Life fund raiser for American Cancer Society, and raised an estimated $2,000 - $2,500 for the cause.   Thanks to our “Vital Statistics” team members: Nancy Angel (Dietician), Nancy Large (Pharmacist), Pauline Headley, RN (lead, 2 North), Rosemary McCarthy (Lab), Mary McHughes, Mary McHughes, Richard Spencer, Scott and Cherie Larson, Colleen Wilson (HR) and any others who pitched in – such as Melissa Evans, who helped set-up, and Erin Noviana who donated 14 inches of her beautiful hair for making wigs for cancer patients. This is dedication in action for the health of our community.
 
The rest of the week’s events fell into the normal range, as we gather ourselves to work toward our next level of excellence.  I want you all to know that we are approaching our improvement in a very structured, and proven effective way.  I have been trained to use the model of the Studer Group whose Nine Principles of Service and Operational Excellence are being widely used to take hospitals to the next level from good to great. Following their design, we have on our “dashboard” six categories in which we have set goals and are working as a team for improvement.
 
The six categories are: Service Excellence:  This is an area we are going to be working hard to improve; Quality: Already we are above average, there is room for improvement and we’re going for great; People: we are aiming to get our staff satisfaction up to the 75th percentile; Finance: we will continue to manage our expenses and keep to our budget; Growth: We aim for increased inpatient and outpatient volumes, and finally, Community: Here we are aiming to increase our market share and community satisfaction, an effort that is both the result and the foundation of all we do.
 
I will keep you posted as we proceed in these areas, as you will all, whether you are hospital staff or community members, be part of our effort.
 
Sincerely,
 
Kelly
 
Kelly Mather, President and CEO, Sonoma Valley Hospital