Building from within
St. Clare Hospital's Rehabilitation Department is a busy place, cramming several patients into a single basement-level room. This year, the unit will move into more spacious quarters on the first floor. Photo by Ben Bromley/News Republic
By Ben Bromley
Construction trailers and cranes have left St. Clare Hospital, but that doesn't mean there's nothing new on campus. After a series of expansion projects, St. Clare no longer is under construction — at least not until work begins on a new home for the Rehabilitation Department in July. Nevertheless, several advancements are under way. "It's easier to build a building than to change a culture," hospital president Sandy Anderson said. Breast cancer center Chief among the projects is a breast cancer evaluation center. This won't require a new building — it will operate out of St. Clare's Medical Imaging Department — but it will feature new equipment and services. Patients can undergo a stereotactic biopsy as an alternative to surgery. Ultrasound and MRI technology also will be used to identify and evaluate suspicious lumps. Computer-aided design systems are being purchased for the MRI and mammography machines. Anderson said female patients requested more timely breast cancer diagnoses. "Sometimes getting to a treatment plan is a three-month time frame, and that's too long," Anderson said. St. Clare's goal is to offer a diagnosis two to three days after a screening mammogram. Laura Jelle, director of quality and performance improvement, assembled patients, community members and staff to tackle this challenge. "This was a team effort," Jelle said. "I think that's key." Hospital staffers are working on several other initiatives a visitor wouldn't notice — unless they happen to follow administrators on their rounds or sneak a peek at St. Clare's satisfaction surveys. Anderson said surveys found St. Clare's inpatient satisfaction ranked in the 13th percentile nationally in early 2006. Now it's in the mid-80s. Officials have stressed the importance of personal relationships among staff members, patients and families. The goal is to make all patients feel as if they're the only ones in the hospital. "It's been a whole culture shift, by putting the patient at the center of everything," Anderson said. "There probably is nothing more sacred than knowing you're taking care of someone who someone loves." In October, the hospital will convert to electronic health records. Touch-screen technology will enable doctors, nurses and technicians to view and update patients' medical histories. That means no more charts getting passed around, eliminating delays and copying errors. "Patient information will literally be at the physician's fingertips," Anderson said. Still under construction Cranes no longer tower overhead, but additions remain on St. Clare's horizon. An urgent care unit will open at the Dells Clinic in a few weeks, complementing St. Clare's existing urgent care units in Baraboo and Lake Delton. The next major project will be the new rehab unit, to be housed on the first floor of an addition previously built onto the hospital's northwest corner. Sandwiched between a new childbirth center on the second floor and a radiation oncology unit below, the new rehab space will house cardiac rehab, outpatient physical therapy, occupational therapy, speech therapy, audiology and sports medicine. Interior construction will start in July, and the rehab staff should be working in their new home by the end of the year. Once that occurs, the Dean Clinic will move downstairs into the rehab unit's former basement-level home, and the Occupational Medicine Department will occupy the Dean Clinic's first-floor location. Cardiac rehab coordinator Thorne Wittstruck said the cramped department faces scheduling restrictions because there isn't enough room for everybody. The move will more than double the rehab department's space. "It's going to allow us to make more time slots available," Wittstruck said. "We need that space right now, but we're making do." Next year, St. Clare will seek funding for what Anderson hopes will be one last expansion. The project would create a new intensive care unit, private rooms for surgery patients and a center for intravenous therapy. Plus, St. Clare hopes to add private rooms at one of its assisted living facilities, St. Clare Meadows Care Center. "I hope those are our last two bricks-and-mortar projects," Anderson said. The breast cancer center should be operational by Oct. 1. Jelle said the work won't end then: While breast cancer was the team's initial focus, St. Clare plans to improve service to all cancer patients. "This is just the beginning. We want to become a rural comprehensive cancer center," Jelle said.
Invisible initiatives