healthcarejournalbr.com | September / October 2008 Issue |
Healthcare Journal of Baton Rouge
61
years in healthcare with 23 years in senior hospi-
tal management. She has been serving as acting
chief executive officer for LKRMC since July 2007.
Prior to serving as acting CEO, Pack-Hookfin at
various times was LKRMC hospital associate
administrator, acute care hospital associate
administrator, human resources director and EEO
coordinator, director of materials and plant man-
agement, and EEO coordinator/assistant ancillary
director.
Louisiana Health Care Quality
Forum Adopts National Standards
for Patient-Centered Medical Homes
The
Louisiana Health Care Quality Forum
(Quality Forum) recently adopted a definition and
standards set forth by the major professional med-
ical societies and the
National Committee for
Quality Assurance
(NCQA) on the Patient-
Centered Medical Home, becoming the first
statewide, multi-stakeholder group in the nation to
do so. The Patient-Centered Medical Home is a
model of primary care where a team led by a pri-
mary care physician partners with the patient and
the community to deliver high quality, cost effec-
tive care. The concept of the medical home puts
the patient at the “center” of healthcare. This
model is also known to improve patient satisfac-
tion and reduce health disparities.
The adopted NCQA standards include expecta-
tions for access and communication, patient track-
ing and registry functions, care management,
patient self-management support, electronic pre-
scribing, test tracking, referral tracking, perform-
ance reporting and improvement, and advanced
electronic communications. The NCQA guidelines
will serve as a voluntary framework for patients,
payers, providers, and purchasers to develop and
certify the medical home. Several payers across
the country and in Louisiana are considering using
them as the foundation for enhanced payments to
practices that meet these standards. The Quality
Forum will work with primary care groups to evolve
into a Patient-Centered Medical Home.
Exemplary Leadership
Recognized with National Award
The
National Association of State Directors of
Developmental Disabilities Services
(NASD-
DDS) recently recognized
Kathy Kliebert,
Assistant Secretary, and staff of the
Office of
Citizens with Developmental Disabilities
in the
Louisiana Department of Health & Hospitals
for
exemplary leadership during and in the aftermath
of Hurricane Katrina. Kliebert was awarded the
Ben Censoni Award for Excellence in Public
Service
. NASDDDS' Board of Directors decided
to give the Ben Censoni Award to the state devel-
opmental disability directors and their staff in
Louisiana, Mississippi, and Texas for their exem-
plary leadership during and after the Katrina disas-
ter. The Mississippi recipient is
Edwin C.
LeGrand, III,
former Deputy Director of
Mississippi's Bureau of Mental Retardation
and his staff. The Texas recipient is
Barry C.
Waller
, Assistant Commissioner for Provider
Services, and staff of the
Texas Department of
Aging and Disability Services
. The awards were
presented during the Association's midyear meet-
ing held in Nashville, Tennessee.
Ochsner Receives
Prestigious Magnet Status
for Nursing Excellence
Ochsner Medical Center
on Jefferson Highway
has been re-designated with MagnetTM
Recognition Status, the highest national award for
nursing excellence. Ochsner first received this
prestigious designation in 2003, applied to the
American Nurses Credentialing Center
(ANCC)
for re-designation in October 2007 and success-
fully completed a site visit in March 2008. The
Magnet Recognition Program is based on quality
indicators and standards of nursing practice as
defined in the American Nurses' Credentialing
Center (ANCC), an affiliate of the
American
Nurses Association.
The Magnet designation is
awarded to hospitals that satisfy a set of criteria
designed to measure the strength and quality of
their nursing. A Magnet hospital is a facility where
nursing delivers excellent patient outcomes,
where nurses have a high level of job satisfaction,
and where there is a low staff nurse turnover rate
and appropriate grievance resolution. Magnet sta-
tus also indicates nursing involvement in data col-
lection and decision-making in patient care deliv-
ery.
LOCAL
Louisiana Health Care Review
Adds Executive Team Members
Louisiana Health Care Review
, Louisiana's
Medicare quality improvement organization, has
added three new healthcare veterans to the LHCR
management team.
Shaun McIntire, MD, MPH,
FACP
has accepted the position of consultant
medical director.
Scott Flowers
is the new project
director for the Louisiana Quality Improvement
Organization contract with the
Centers for
Medicare and & Medicaid Services (CMS)
.
Bob
Johannessen
has joined LHCR as corporate
director of communications.
Dr. McIntire assumes many of the quality improve-
ment activities previously led by
Dr. Tony Sun
,
who recently announced his relocation to Kansas
City, Mo. Dr. McIntire is a native of New Orleans,
and a graduate of
Tulane University
with a
Doctor of Medicine and a Master's in Public
Health. He completed his Internal Medicine resi-
dency at
Earl K. Long Hospital
in Baton Rouge,
and worked as an Emergency Room physician
within the area. He then joined
Green Clinic
in
Ruston, La. and later became Assistant Professor
at
LSU Monroe
with administrative duties at
E.A.
Conway Medical Center,
Monroe. He returned to
solo private practice in Ruston, and has been a
strong advocate for quality improvement and
adoption of electronic health records for physician
practices. Dr. McIntire is currently a hospitalist at
St. Francis Hospital
in Monroe. He is a fellow of
the
American College of Physicians
, and has
served on LHCR Clinical Advisory Board since its
inception.
In his role, Flowers is responsible for overseeing
the $20 million contract with CMS and leading tar-
geted quality improvement activities across the
state to improve health care outcomes. He has 10
years of healthcare operations and quality
improvement experience. He most recently served
as the director of Lean Six Sigma at
Memorial
Hermann Southwest Hospital,
Houston and is
certified as a Black Belt in the Six Sigma
Methodology. Previously, Flowers served as the
administrator of the Operative Care Line at the
Michael E. DeBakey Veterans Affairs Medical
Center.
He is a Thibodaux, La. native who gradu-
ated from
Louisiana State University
in 1997. He
received a Masters of Health Care Administration
and Masters of Business Administration from the
University of Houston
in 2000.
Johannessen brings to LHCR more than 25 years
experience in public relations and marketing, most
recently serving as director of communications for
the
Louisiana Department of Health and
Hospitals
. Johannessen served as DHH's direc-
tor of communications from 1998-2008. Prior to
DHH, he spent 10 years in communications man-
agement positions with the
Baton Rouge General
Medical Center
, the
General Health System
and
Mary Bird Perkins Cancer Center
, all in Baton
Rouge. Johannessen is a former president of the
Baton Rouge chapter of the
Public Relations
Society of America
, a past board member of the
Public Relations Association of Louisiana
, has
served on the boards of the
American Hospital
Association's
PR/Marketing society and the
National Public Health Information Coalition
.
He is a graduate of Louisiana State University's
School of Journalism and the
Baton Rouge
Chamber of Commerce
Leadership Class of
1997.
Zen-Bio, Inc and Pennington
Biomedical Research Center
Collaborate to Identify
Therapeutic Agents from Natural Products
Zen-Bio, Inc
. and
Pennington Biomedical
Research Center
(PBRC) are collaborating to
identify natural compounds for the prevention and
treatment of metabolic disease and obesity. The
initial phase of the program includes screening
thousands of botanical extracts for their beneficial
effects on primary human abdominal fat cells and
adult stem cells. The
Botanical Research Center
at PBRC, a collaborative center between PBRC
and the Center of Agriculture and the
Environment of Rutgers University
, provides a
unique library of botanical extracts. Researchers
from Zen-Bio will screen the compounds with their
human fat-derived stem cell screening system.
This program brings together the expertise of Zen-
Bio and PBRC in metabolic disease research with
that of the Botanical Research Center to discover
natural therapeutics for obesity and diabetes. The
collaboration is funded in part by a Phase I Small
Business Technology Transfer (STTR) grant
awarded by the
National Institutes of Health
(NIH).
NovaMed Acquires
Interventional Pain
Management Center
Chicago-based
NovaMed, Inc.
has acquired a
51% interest in the
Interventional Pain
Management Center
, an ambulatory surgery cen-
ter with four operating rooms located here in Baton
Rouge. The center currently performs pain man-
agement procedures exclusively, about 15,000 in
the past year, but has the potential to add other
specialties. The state-of-the-art facility is currently
used by five doctors, four of whom will partner with
NovaMed. The company acquires, develops and
operates ambulatory surgery centers in partner-
ship with physicians and now has majority owner-
ship interests in 35 surgery centers located in 18
states.