Virtual Meeting with Special Guest
Court LeMaistre, FACHE, CEO of Methodist Children’s Hospital and Women’s Services
In September, we had special guest, Court LeMaistre, CEO of Methodist Children’s Hospital and Women’s Services, join us for our TIPS Connection virtual meeting (via Zoom). He was joined by Negar Johnson (CNO of Methodist Children’s Hospital and Women’s Services), April Tolleson (ACNO of Methodist Children’s Hospital and Women’s Services), and Kacey O’Conner (VP of Business Development). We also had a great turn out with a number of Physician Clients, Associates, and Specialists within the Texas Inpatient Pediatrics Network join and participate on this discussion. The main topics of discussion revolved around the direct admit process, how to identify TIPS babies in the nursery, discharge from NICU and bed capacity at MCH.
For example, Dr. Ortiz stated that about 50% of time he receives calls from the call center to admit a patient from an urgent care or emergency room and the other 50% is from a pediatrician’s office. He takes it a step further by calling and giving the emergency room at MCH specific instructions to not admit the incoming patient into the ER and to send them directly to admissions. Potential ideas to creating a more seamless process were: code these patients ahead of to time so they are flagged as direct admit for TIPS and/or to create a flyer that is given to patients to act as a guide for being admitted to MCH from the pediatrician’s office.
Another idea that originated from this great dialogue was for the discharge summary to be ready upon discharge from the NICU. Mr. Court LeMaistre agreed with that idea & will forward this suggestion to the Neotologist. These patients tend to have complex cases so this will allow providers such as Dr. Tseng from Centromed to know what to expect prior to the patient arriving at the clinic for a follow up.
The ideas derived from this meeting don’t stop when the call ends. They keep going by having TIPS be the bridge that connects providers in the ambulatory setting to those in the acute care facilities.
Lastly, there are a lot of new developments on the horizon for Methodist such as being heart transplant capable with the help of Dr. Mahesh Sharma, a Congenital Cardiovascular Surgeon. They are also heavily investing in their ECMO program so that MCH can offer an ECPR program. Lastly, Methodist Children’s is working with Dr. Lam, Director of Neonatoloy at MCH, to create subspecialized NICUs within their Level IV NICU such as cardiac and neuro. These are just a few of the many initiatives planned for the upcoming year. If you would like additonal information, please reach out to the administrative office via email or phone.