The Daughters of Charity Health System, a regional healthcare system with 22 sites including Saint Louise Regional Hospital in Gilroy, recently announced the creation of a Santa Clara County Market that aims to bolster communication between hospitals; continuity of patient care from the Emergency Room to the physician’s office; and placing a heightened emphasis on preventative, informative care as well as ongoing chronic disease management.
There are no immediate changes that patients will notice, per se – rather, the Market encompasses a movement in the direction of a “value-based care delivery system focusing on population health management in our communities” and seamless integration between the physician’s office and the ER, according to Market Leader James Dover, who is CEO of Saint Louise and San Jose-based O’Connor hospitals.
Dover will step in and navigate the new “strategic direction aligning” of O’Connor, Saint Louise and DePaul Urgent Care in Morgan Hill “to become a health care center of excellence in Santa Clara County.”
“We have to move away from individual silo sites of care to become more regional,” Dover explained, who said the new initiative aims to build a “strong regional presence that brings together expertise and skills from our hospitals and multiple care sites in the South Bay.”
DOCHS, for example, isn’t set up like Kaiser Permanente, which has a “tightly woven” staffing model “in a community setting,” Dover explained. The new Santa Clara County Market will focus on aligning the “footprint” between physicians and urgent care centers.
“How do we align with the doctors, given that we are not a Kaiser-type group, is really critical to our future success,” said Dover. “It’s our most exciting and challenging opportunity, but we’re at the beginning of that journey.”
Another element Dover stressed is population health management within communities. Under President Obama’s Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, which was signed into law March 23 and is commonly referred to as “Obamacare,” Dover pointed out that Medicare is putting incentives in place where “you get paid to keep patients healthy. We have to learn to start taking care of the population as a whole, not just when they’re sick.”
One example of “population health management,” said Dover, is establishing additional measures to prevent and monitor patients who are at-risk for, or have diabetes. According to the 2010 Santa Clara County Health Profile Report, 66 percent of Gilroy adults are overweight or obese, and report higher rates of asthma, smoking, binge drinking, diabetes, high blood pressure and high blood cholesterol than the county population as a whole. More adults in Gilroy (52 percent) reported not performing any vigorous physical activity than adults in the county (46 percent).
There will be no reductions in services or fees as a result of the creation of a Santa Clara County Ministry Market, according to Director of Marketing Donna Cumming with O’Connor Hospital. The changes will not impact DOCHS’s policy, either, which turns no one away because of inability to pay. After a patient is cared for, a financial adviser works with that patient if he/she is uninsured.
Most recently at Saint Louise, Joanne Allen, the hospital’s five-year president and CEO, stepped into a new position as CEO of Seton Medical Center in Daly City and Seton Coastside in Moss Beach. Saint Louise’s current Chief Operating Officer, Carol Furgurson, took over as interim CEO April 15.
Dover, who said he is President and CEO above O’Connor and Saint Louise, defined Fergurson’s current official title as Acting Chief Administrative Officer of Saint Louise.
Sales tax still on the table
As for a possible sales tax measure to build a new ER room at Saint Louise – the hospital surveyed approximately 500 registered voters in Gilroy by phone in the last weeks of December 2011 to see if the community would be willing to help fund a $25 to $30 million emergency room overhaul – Cumming confirmed “we are still studying the possibility of a sales tax increase.”
Polling came on the heels of an exponentially growing need for emergency medical services at Saint Louise, spokeswoman Jasmine Nguyen previously explained. This prompted the hospital to search for a means to expand its emergency room; a project Nguyen said will cost $25 to $30 million.
Having received “three times the national average” number of patients requiring emergency medical services in 2011 for a facility of its size, Nguyen explained the hospital needs “explore all avenues to help meet the community needs for more emergency service capacity.”
In the interim, Saint Louise’s “cozy” ER wing – which could easily be mistaken for a modestly furnished hallway – is servicing an annual average of 27,000 patients.
Hospital management is hoping to at least double the size of the ER, which has eight beds and was built in 1989. The vision is to construct an entirely brand-new ER wing, then possibly utilize the old facility for radiology or magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) services.
