Keeping Up

New Portal for Patients to Access Health Records

Affects ‘Meaningful Use stage 2’ payments

On July 1st we deployed our new patient portal- FollowMyHealth, which offers patients personalized on-line access to portions of their medical records using a computer, smartphone or tablet. It enables our patients to securely use the Internet to help manage and receive medical information. Using a secure username and password, patients can view health information including but not limited to:

Recent doctor visits
Discharge summaries
Medications
Immunizations
Allergies
Lab results

FollowMyHealth is provided by Allscripts and combines medical information from Danbury Hospital and Western Connecticut Medical Group. Our patients will also be able to access their medical information from other providers that participate in FollowMyHealth, for example Associated Neurologists, ProHealth providers, and Neurosurgical Associates of Southwestern Connecticut among others. FollowMyHealth will help improve our communication with our patients, allow our patients to become better informed about their health issues, and will also help both the hospital and providers qualify for Meaningful Use stage 2.

For questions about the Patient Portal and Meaningful Use issues contact Dr. Eric Jimenez (eric.jimenez@wchn.org) 203-733-2124.

Branding, Marketing/Communications and Business Development Update

New Network name, consolidated Marketing Organization, added physician outreach

With the creation of our new network, we anticipate launching a new network brand in early 2015. We've completed the research stage, and are now working with an outside marketing firm to finalize the best way to communicate the many benefits of our network to our target audiences. While the names of the local hospitals will remain unchanged, we do expect to have a new name for the network. Stay tuned for an internal announcement in the late fall.

Since the affiliation became effective in January, we have moved to a consolidated Network marketing and communications service – bringing together branding and advertising, public affairs, community relations, communications and business development functions. Over the next two months, Marketing will work with service line and departmental leaders to help develop and execute fully integrated marketing plans to support the service line priorities and business objectives for fiscal year 2015.

To assist in achieving these goals, we are building a talented internal team that will be supplemented with external resources as needed. To lead the team, we will be welcoming Joe Carofano as the VP of Marketing and Communications on August 18. Joe is a seasoned executive with extensive experience in building brands and market presence. Joe will be based at the Norwalk Hospital campus, which is the "headquarters" for the Marketing Team.

We are also rounding out our business development resources. We now have Sonnie Sherry and Karin Coppola focused on physician outreach in the greater Danbury and New Milford communities. We continue to recruit for one more individual to join Sally Mitchell in Norwalk. If you haven’t already, you will soon be hearing from one of them!

We are also in the initial phases of a network website redesign. Estaban Manco has joined the team as Webmaster and Digital Media Coordinator and is part of a multi-disciplinary team overseeing this project. Once the technical platform has been selected, service line leaders and department heads will be brought into the process to ensure the new site meets their needs. The new web site 'soft launch' is tentatively set for early 2015.

Move Update on the Peter and Carmen-Lucia Buck Pavilion

Including New Physician Parking

(From Mike Daglio, Chief Operating Officer WCHN)

The construction phase of the new Pavilion has been completed. We are now in the process of preparing all of the floors for their inspections and moves from their Tower locations to their new Pavilion locations. Below are some key updates for you to share with your patients and office staff.

Floors Relocating from the Tower Building:

October 10, 2014: The current surgical floor on 10 Tower will be relocating to the 8th floor of the new Pavilion.
October 25, 2014: The current step down unit on 10 Tower will be relocating to the 7th floor of the new Pavilion.
October 26, 2014: The current ICU will relocate from 7 Tower to 7 Pavilion.
September 10, 2014: The current E.D. will relocate to the 6th floor of the New Pavilion.

Important Parking Changes:
The Rizzo (formerly “Blue”) Garage officially opened to the public on Tuesday, July 15th. There are new parking guidelines for employees, physicians, patients and visitors:

Level 2 is reserved for Medical Staff and valet parking staging (enter via Oasis driveway)
Employees, visitors and patients who prefer to “self-park” in the Rizzo Garage should enter from the driveway adjacent to the Broadview School field – which is also the Ambulatory Surgery Unit driveway. The “Oasis” driveway is reserved for valet parking for patients, visitors, special needs, and physician access only.

News from the WCHN PHO – Active in Norwalk

The WCHN PHO officially kicked off recruitment of Norwalk Community Physicians in early May. General communications and FAQ’s went out to all physicians on Medical staff at Norwalk Hospital. The PHO focused its initial education and recruitment efforts on primary care physicians/group practices. Our efforts have included group meetings, individual physician meetings, hospital department presentations and presentation to the Medical Staff. To date we have had 23 NHP&S Physicians sign up for the PHO and are in active discussions with several large practices.

News in Lyme Disease Research

If you are a physician caring for a patient with confirmed Lyme disease, particularly those with the EM rash, please refer them to Lyme disease research team at 203.739.8383. With the patient’s permission, you may share their information with us and we will contact him/her directly. Those of you using Allscripts may also refer a patient electronically, just as you would refer a patient to any specialist. Contact us for more information. Please note that neither testing nor treatment are offered through these studies; you should continue to treat patients as you normally would.

Network Receives First National Institutes of Health Grant
The Lyme disease research team at the Western Connecticut Health Network Biomedical Research Institute in collaboration with RareCyte, Inc. has secured the Network’s first NIH grant! This monumental two-year, $600,000 grant from the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Disease (NIAID) Small Business Innovation Research Program (SBIR) was awarded to study a new potential diagnostic test for Lyme disease. The assay method under investigation was developed under the leadership of Dr. Paul Fiedler, Chair of Pathology and Laboratory Medicine at WCHN. It combines RareCyte’s density-based separation and enrichment technology for rare cells with immunofluorescence microscopy to allow for direct visualization of Borrelia burgdorferi, the causative agent of Lyme disease, in peripheral blood samples. Although in the early stages of investigation, the research team is excited by initial findings and grateful for the opportunity to further their work in order to improve Lyme disease testing. If you are diagnosing a patient with Lyme disease please consider referring them to the Lyme disease research team for possible inclusion in this and other exciting Lyme disease studies.

New Insights into Lyme disease – a Milestone article
The late spring and summer months have been extremely busy for Lyme disease research efforts. We are most grateful to all of you who have referred patients with acute Lyme disease to the Registry and to our associated Lyme disease studies. The data collected by the Registry are systematically studied to assess the many challenging aspects of this disease. The most recent milestone is a new study co-authored by staff in the Research department and published in the Journal of Primary Care & Community Health.Click here to read more

This article highlights the overlapping symptoms associated with Lyme disease for acute and persistently symptomatic patients with Lyme disease. The Lyme Disease Registry has enrolled 256 participants, 24% are acute cases, 45% are persistently symptomatic cases, and 31% are recovered cases. The symptoms experienced by the group of patients with persistent symptoms had unexpectedly strong overlap with those experienced by acutely infected patients.

Network Integration: What’s Happening?

In the summer of 2013, 21 WCHN integration teams formulated recommendations on how we would reap the benefits of the affiliation, defining how they would function as a single healthcare network. Recommendations ranged from leveraging economies of scale to increase purchasing power, to growing service lines in a larger collective service area, to investing in resources to improve the continuum of care from pre-hospital to post-hospital visit.

By the fall of 2013, the teams had created detailed work plans that outlined the steps and work required to implement these recommendations post-affiliation, and in January 2014 the 21 teams began implementing their work plans.

Seven months later, the Integration Management Office is now led by Mike D’Aquila who is based at Norwalk Hospital. The IMO works closely with the Operational Excellence team to guide the individual teams, who produce monthly status reports and flag any issues/barriers related to implementing their plans. The IMO reviews team progress, while an Integration Steering Committee, led by Dan DeBarba and Mike Daglio, continues to provide overall project guidance.

Over the next few weeks, please watch for a series “Leadership Announcements” that will provide updates on the progress and plans of various integration teams. These updates will be sent via email and included in Vital Signs Online. Please continue to send any questions to: askus@wchn.org