Dixie Regional Medical Center Update

Welcome to the 634th meeting of the Rotary Club of Dixie Sunrise!

By Terri Kane, Administrator, Dixie Regional Medical Center

This presentation is a “make good” on the promise we made five years ago to “Bring World-Class Healthcare Home.” Five years ago, many joined us in a beautifully decorated tent which housed the Jubilee of Trees to kick off of a week-long grand opening celebration of the Dixie Regional Medical Center River Road Campus. Those events marked the arrival of a new era of healthcare for southern Utah and with it a commitment to bring world-class healthcare home to Dixie. These past 5 years have been challenging, exhausting, rewarding, and invigorating. And there is more to come.

What better place to begin than our Life Flight services? Intermountain Healthcare has a fixed wing aircraft based at our St. George Airport for medical transport. In 2003 our hospital transferred approximately 700 patients to other more advanced facilities for services we didn’t provide. Today that number has decreased to about 300 patients per year. The reduction is due to the advancement of our cardiac services, vascular services, stroke services, and newborn intensive care. Patients with head trauma, severe burns, or rare conditions requiring multiple specialists are flown elsewhere.

We have reached a point in community demographics and in our capabilities at Dixie Regional to support the addition of a helicopter to our Life Flight fleet in St. George. Imagine your loved one having a heart attack on the back nine at Sun River. An ambulance will get there in 15 minutes or more and back to the hospital in another 20 minutes. A Life Flight helicopter would arrive and have your loved one back to the hospital in 12 minutes. In heart attack patients – time is heart muscle. With the community’s help we can bring a helicopter sooner than otherwise. The helicopter will cost Intermountain 7.5 million. In addition, we will invest in hiring, training, and supporting 24/7 crews. We need to raise $2.3 million by 2010 to help. In 5 years we will wonder how we ever did without this service – like the other successful services we have today.

This year our critical care services at the hospital earned official designation as a level 3 trauma center. Our ER wait times are less than half the national average. Around the nation the average time spent in an emergency department is five hours. At Dixie Regional it is two hours and 15 minutes – and we are the third busiest emergency room in the entire state. In 2008 we implemented a call center, connecting our services to those providing services in other hospitals in our region. We facilitate an immediate connection to a physician, initiate transport and a team if needed, and provide follow-up if a patient is transferred to Dixie for care.

In 2007 we implemented a hospitalist program. We recruited physicians who specialize in the management of hospitalized patients. These physicians accept and treat patients from referring facilities. They also accept patients from our local physicians who prefer not to do inpatient hospital care. As soon as a patient is ready for discharge he or she returns to their own physician. We have 3 physicians serving as hospitalists now, with three more in the process of joining us.

In 2007 and 2008 our hospital received the prestigious distinction as a stroke center of excellence. We were recognized in a recent edition of US News and World Report. This is another program transparent to the public but with rigorous care protocols and timetables behind the scenes to ensure a patient’s best chance for recovery.

We are told now that medical knowledge is doubling every five years and soon to double every two. Here is an example of accelerated healing in ways that weren’t possible 5 years ago. Toddler Jack Sorenson, suffered severe burns on his hands from falling against a hot grill at Worthen Park. After a series of hyperbaric chamber treatments on our 400 East Campus he has made a remarkable recovery with no loss of function. Our hyperbaric program heals diabetic ulcers in 94% of the cases compared to the national number of 85%. Since program inception we have had 100% success in healing bone infections; the national average is 85%.

Since our move to the River Road hospital in 2003, we started an open-heart surgery program with three very fine surgeons. Nearly 1700 heart surgeries later we have climbed the national cardiovascular charts to finish as a Thomson Top 100 Heart Hospital in the Nation in 2007.

The center for Medicare documents the outcomes of 2500 American hospitals and reports the results to the public. We are the only hospital in Utah and Nevada to have received their HealthInsights Excellence in Quality award in both 2007 and 2008 and have won many other local and national honors. And according to the Deseret News, if you visit healthgrades.com, you will find Dixie Regional’s services and see how they compare favorably to other hospitals in the state and nation.

One of our five-star programs is women’s and children’s services. We have best in class performance in birthing. We have outstanding results coming from our newborn intensive care unit, which is just three years old. We have successfully recruited a perinatologist, a specialist in high risk obstetrics, who manages complicated pregnancies and consults with obstetricians. Dr. Arch, a pediatric geneticist just joined our staff to work with parents who have genetic complications of pregnancy and with our cancer program to identify families with genes which may lead to future disease.

Our acute rehab unit on 400 East Campus treats compromised patients who are not yet able to care for themselves at home. We treat patients with severe accidents, neurological illnesses, stroke, and many other debilitating conditions. Our return to function gain on this unit is 30% higher than national benchmarks.

We now offer two Jubilee Homes to patients and their families, one near each campus. These homes provide a home away from, home atmosphere for people who come from miles away to see loved ones, or to receive treatments.

In 2008 the Russell Taylor Health Science building of DSC opened on our campus. As we continue on our journey 3000 new employees will need to be hired over the next 5 years. Without Dixie State’s aligned goals for health education and degree expansion we would not be able to staff our hospital.

You will see a new building under construction on our River Road campus. The outpatient pavilion will open late this summer to welcome most visitors who come to the hospital for outpatient surgery and other outpatient procedures. It also features comprehensive sports and fitness services which will dramatically shift our thinking about hospital care from illness to wellness.

In closing, I hope you can see we are good for our word. We have brought and will continue to bring world-class healthcare home. Please know we constantly strive to be a great hospital – one where outstanding physicians provide patients, who come from far and wide, with excellent care; one where employees enjoy and take pride in their work to help others. Thank you for helping us accomplish these goals.