What Do You Think?

From March 2003: Patient Follow Up Our lab is going to start following patients after discharge to home. The plan is to call patients at home and ask them various questions about their post-hospital recovery period. We’d like to know what other labs do in regards to: Follow up time-frame; How they document these interviews; What questions are asked during the interview; Where is the data stored; Who is responsible for accomplishing this (i.e. cath lab nurses/techs, clinic staff, same day admissions); What is your staffing ratio How is time allotted to complete this task (daily vs. weekly, hours per day/week ). Any input is greatly appreciated and we look forward to hearing your ideas. The Rush Cath Lab Rush Presbyterian St. Luke’s Medical Center, Chicago, Il. Email: jacquern1@yahoo.com Cc: CathLabDigest@aol.com Re: Patient Follow Up. Our small hospital here in Vidalia, GA calls every patient, pre & post cath. An RN is responsible for calling. Pre cath calls are made to ensure no mix-ups with NPO & other orders, etc. We educate then too. Prior to a JCAHO inspection a few months back, we documented calls to a notebook kept in the lab. During the physician visit to our lab, the doc asked specifically about post-procedure calls. He liked the calls, but didn’t like the notebook. We now document to the chart via a progress note. Extensive documentation regards who, when, how many calls were made, etc. are now a part of the chart. Questions are basic and simple. Any issues are immediately referred to the cathing doc. Time is allotted as needed. This is important to our consistently high patient satisfaction score…our patients & family really appreciate the extra attention. Jim Strickland, Director Meadows Regional Medical Center Vidalia, GA jstrickland@meadowsregional.org March 2003: Interventions Without Open Heart Backup We noticed that the lab featured in the January 2003 Cath Lab Digest (Governor Juan F. Luis Hospital & Medical Center, St. Croix, U.S. Virgin Islands) does interventions without open heart backup. This brought up two questions: 1. How many cath labs are there in the U.S.? 2. How many of these labs do intervention without OR backup? We are hearing more and more labs starting without open heart backup, so we are curious as to what the ratio is now. Michael Wellner and staff, Holy Family Memorial Medical Center, Manitowoc, WI Email: MWellner@HFMHealth.org Cc: CathLabDigest@aol.com Re: Interventions Without Open Heart Backup. I am the manager of a cardiac cath lab in southern Arizona in which we currently do PCI in the setting of AMI without surgical backup. We do not do any elective interventions. We are about 30 minutes by air from a hospital with open heart surgery. Maureen Warwick, RN, Cath Lab Manager Sierra Vista Regional Health Center Sierra Vista, AZ maureen.warwick@svrhc.org

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