Centerviews
A Publication of The University of Texas Harris County Psychiatric Center

Monday, May 17, 2004

In This Issue:

In Memoriam
Hospitalwide Meeting Update
Psyc Tech Of The Year Announced
Employee Of The Quarter Announced
Outpatient Services Staffer Honored
Dean’s Teaching Excellence Awards
Changes To UT Flex Program – Inservice June 2
Performance Improvement - UTHCPC’s 2004 FMEA: (Insulin Ordering And Administration Process)
Physician Mentoring Program
Resources Available
ADT Summary, April 2004
Employee Recognition Week A Success

Centerviews Electronic Version
CenterViews has gone electronic! In an effort to be more printer and reader friendly, CenterViews will only be available on-line. Please send information to be included in CenterViews to Geri Konigsberg, email geralyn.g.konigsberg@uth.tmc.edu or mail to Room 3A31. Your comments and suggestions are always welcome.

In Memoriam –
The Administration and staff of UTHCPC were saddened to learn of the passing of Hugo Baltazar, a senior hospital aid on Unit 2E A memorial service will be held Wednesday, May 19, at 2 pm in the UTHCPC auditorium. All are welcome to attend.

Hosptialwide Meeting Update
A possible final site for the Mental Sciences Institute, a full-time staff member to do development, and the announcement of Mildred Aller as Employee of the Quarter, highlighted the hospital-wide meeting April 27.

According to UTHCPC Executive Director Robert W. Guynn, the new MSI building will now most likely be built in the parking lot across from UTHCPC, facing South MacGregor.

Dr. Guynn and Chief Administrator Lois J. Moore announced an agreement with the UTHSCH Development Department whereby the hospital will have a development or fundraising officer dedicated to UTHCPC Dr. Moore is seeking ideas from staff about which UTHCPC programs to seek funding for, especially those which enhance our services in the community.

Dr. Moore also explained what is happing with the “disease management” model of treatment for mental illness, which all Texas local MHMR authorities must implement this fall. In Harris County, she said, about 12,000 to 15,000 people will be without treatment because they no longer qualify for the “priority population.” Moore met with administrators from the Harris County Hospital District to develop a plan to treat these people at the district’s health clinics.

Noting that the hospital was currently full and had been so for the past two weeks, Moore reported an average daily census 191.4 for the second quarter of 2004 with 86.7% occupancy. She also reported that the hospital was seeing more patients with third party payer sources.

A new financial plan for Outpatient Behavioral Services has meant an increase in income for that program, which, Moore stressed, ends up benefiting the inpatient programs as well; the inpatient and outpatient services work in tandem to support benefits for the entire operation, including staff-related benefits, she said.

Collections of patient income, which are being handled through a contract with ARM; year-to-date collections are improving; currently, but they are $176,000 less than last year to date. Another positive note: patient volume at UTHCPC Outpatient Behavioral Services is up by 15 percent.

The UTHSCH leadership, Moore reported, has asked each component of the HSC to increase where possible its use of historically underused businesses (HUB); although UTHCPC leads the other components with an 11 percent usage rate of HUBs. Moore would like to see that rise to 20 percent this fiscal year.

Sherri Orioli, Director of Personnel Services Management invited and encouraged all employees to become involved in Employee Recognition Week held May 3 through 8. Although this is traditionally National Nurse’s Week, Moore has expanded the celebration to honor all clinical patient care staff.

Strategic Planning and Marketing Director Gary Conwell noted a number of partnership activities in which UTHCPC is engaged, including the establishing a “traumatic stress network” for children, Blueprint Houston and the Center for Houston’s Future, and Gateway to Care, and PASS (Partners In After School Services), now in its second year at Lockhart Elementary.

Richard Montayne, Director of MIS, reported on the status of the Sunrise Clinical System Project and said that the Allegra system would be replaced by September 1. Building rewiring, document imaging, replacing the email system and providing audio and video for the auditorium are MIS projects currently in process.

Assistant Administrator Susan Grice, reported on the Clinical Care areas, noting that social services is working with MHMRA to establish a process for review of continued stay and improve aftercare arrangements. Seclusion rates continue to decline and the discharge process regarding medication and future appointments has been improved; plans are now made to establish an earlier time for the discharge of patients. Nursing has started doing grand rounds and is preparing to begin a magnet program for special recognition of quality nursing service.

Psych Tech Of The Year Announced
Cassie James, Psychiatric Technician was nominated as the UTHCPC Psychiatric Technician of the Year for the Houston and Harris County Mental Health Association’s annual award, which she will receive at a luncheon this month.

Employee Of The Quarter Announced
Mil Aller was named as Employee of the Quarter. Other nominees for the award who were presented certificates were Horace Holness, Tammy Merimon and Delia Saenz.

Outpatient Services Staffer Honored
Elise Kane, a nurse in Outpatient Services, recently graduated with a 4.0 in the nurse practitioner’s program. In addition, she received the Harris County Medical Society Auxiliary Clinical Excellence Award. The award is given to students who exhibit a caring behavior, a high level of competency in technical skills, demonstrate the ability to work well with physicians and other members of the health care team, as well
as demonstrate creativity and innovativeness in approaching new clinical
problems.

Dean’s Teaching Excellence Awards
Congratulations to Psychiatry and Behavioral Science faculty recipients of the UT Medical School Dean’s Teaching Excellence Awards, presented recently. Bravo to
Patricia M. Averill, Michael G. Berno, Elizabeth H. David, R. Andrew Harper, Jary M. Lesser, Anu A. Matorin, Octavio C. Pinnell, Sonja L. Randle, Donna T. Rocha, and Nuran N. Shah.

Changes To UT Flex Program – Inservice June 2
Personnel Systems Director Sherri Orioli announced a change in the UT FLEX program. UT FLEX is a pre-tax plan that allows you to reduce the amount you pay in Social Security and federal income taxes. The Internal Revenue Code, Sec. 125, allows employees to deposit a portion of their salary prior to taxation by means of a salary conversion agreement into flexible spending accounts. These accounts may be used to pay eligible health care expenses not paid by other benefit plans such as deductibles or co-payments under medical, dental and vision plans or dependent care expenses like child daycare and disabled dependent care and approved day care expenses.

FlexBen Corporation, who administers our UT FLEX program, will be conducting an in-service on Wednesday, June 2nd from 3:30 till 4:30 in the HCPC Auditorium to explain the changes to our plan. If you currently participate in the UT FLEX program, are contemplating participation, or just want to obtain more information, please plan to attend.

Performance Improvement - UTHCPC’s 2004 FMEA: (Insulin Ordering and Administration Process)
Organizations are required by the JCAHO to annually conduct a proactive risk assessment (FMEA) for identifying and reducing risks to the safety of patients.

The selection is to be based, in part, on Sentinel Event Alerts received from the JCAHO that identify the most frequently occurring types of Sentinel Event Alerts in health care organizations. Although FMEA’s are a means toward complying with JCAHO, they have been proven to reduce risk of errors, near misses and protect patients from harm.

This year, UTHCPC has chosen to review the Insulin Administration Process with a specific focus on the critical failure modes that can occur with the Insulin Sliding Scale.

Previous UTHCPC’s Organizational-wide FMEA’s included Suicide prevention, Medication Use Processes, and the Computerized Physician Order Entry.
As a reminder, the FMEA process is a proactive risk assessment. Its focus is to find the source of the problems before they occur, so that performance improvement processes can be implemented proactively rather than reactively. The ultimate goal of an FMEA is to ensure that an organization identifies and addresses the most critical failure modes of a system or process before they occur.

Team membership consists of staff that is closet to and actually carries out the process/s to be reviewed. Most importantly, their perspective and input is vital to the success of the FMEA.

Team members selected for this year’s FMEA are Vivian Abobo, Janine Catalano, Dr Smeal, Jeanette Washington, Wanda Roberts, Jennifer Ray, and Arslee Mackey. A representative from Dietary and an Attending physician will also participate. The team will examine the processes related to ordering and administration of insulin (which will include a look at how blood sugar is monitored). The team will examine risk areas and prioritize which part of process is most in need of corrective action. The teams’ recommendations will be forwarded to related hospital committees and action will be taken to proactively reduce identified risk areas.

Physician Mentoring Program
UTHSCH physicians are being asked to mentor a student for one or two days. The National Youth Leadership Forum in Medicine will host 800 high school honor students from across the US to two sessions of training and observation this summer. UT is looking for 75 physicians or other medical professionals to allow a student to shadow them for one or two days – July 13 and/or July 27. For more information, contact Patricia Averill, ext. 3951.

Resources Available
Library Services Manager Felicia Chuang has forwarded the following resources, which may be of interest:
AHA News: http://www.ahanews.com
American Medical News: http://www.ama-assn.org/amednews/index.htm
HealthLeaders: http://www.healthleaders.com
Modern Healthcare's Daily Dose: http://www.modernhealthcare.com/register.cms
Federal Register: http://listserv.access.gpo.gov

ADT Summary, April 2004

Employee Recognition Week A Success
Employee Recognition Week, May 3 – 8, 2004, was a huge success. “It was wonderful to take an opportunity to recognize all of the staff at UTHCPC for the fine job they are doing in helping us fulfill our mission,” said Chief Administrator Lois J. Moore. “The recognition week committee, Sherri Orioli, Chair, Brenda York, Paul Sturdahl, and Gene McCardle, as well as the many other volunteers, are to be commended for their hard work and dedication in coordinating the many activities of the week,” said Moore.