Faulkner joins the Partners Paging System
On May 15, Faulkner's pagers were added to the Partners paging system. The conversion involved adding "66" to the beginning of existing Faulkner three-digit page ID numbers. Faulkner departments and staff can now be located through the Partners Telephone Directory.
BWPO takes shape
Now that the Brigham and Women’s Physicians Organization (BWPO) has been approved by
all departments, its governing body, the BWPO Board, led by Chairman Lawrence Cohn, MD, chief, Cardiac Surgery, held an organizational meeting on May 24.
Joining Cohn on the BWPO Board are Robert Handin, MD; Victor Dzau, MD; Michael Zinner, MD; David Sugarbaker, MD; Ramzi Cotran, MD; Simon Gelman, MD, PhD; Robert Barbieri, MD; Thomas Thornhill, MD; and Steven Seltzer, MD. Physicians from Anesthesiology, Perioperative and Pain Medicine, Obstetrics and Gynecology, and Orthopedics will be elected to the board soon. Ron Walls, MD, Martin Samuels, MD, and Jonathan Borus, MD are non-voting members, as will be physicians from Pathology and Radiology. A primary care physician will also be appointed, and five lay trustees have been named. Jeffrey Otten, BWH President, Troy Brennan, MD, BWPO president, and Anthony Whittemore, MD, Chief Medical Officer, round out the board.
Two other milestones in the BWPO’s development will be the move to a newly renovated
central location at 111 Cypress Street in Brookline in mid-June and the conversion to a single, state-of-the-art IDX billing system on July 1, 2000. The new billing operation leaves control of day-to-day operations in the hands of the departments, so as to ensure accountability,
but consolidates the business operations in one location to gain efficiency.
The organization itself creates certain cooperative business relationships between Brigham and Women’s physicians and Massachusetts General Hospital physicians and allows BWH physicians to join the other economically integrated Partners physicians to negotiate all
contracts with third-party payors.
Partners Night at the Pops: A Celebration in Honor of Our Physicians
The Third Annual Partners Night at the Pops for physicians and their guests will be held on Friday, June 23, and will be hosted by Samuel O. Thier, MD, president and CEO of Partners, Ellen Zane, PCHI Network President, and George Thibault, MD, vice president of Clinical Affairs. For further information about the event, please contact Patti Salamone at psalamone@partners.org.
Again this year, Partners’ very own “talent” will be featured on stage with conductor Keith Lockhart and the Pops. If you like to sing, you may be interested in performing with the special “physician chorus” to sing an Irish song during the program. To participate, please contact Terry Wagner at twagner@partners.org or 724-0928.
Private Staff Update
The Private Staff have elected the following members for three-year terms beginning June 1st: Gary Kearney, MD, president; Roseanna Means, MD, secretary; Philip Goldsmith, MD; Jeffrey Katz, MD; James Marquardt, MD; Raymond Reilly, MD; and Amnon Wachman, MD.
Funding Opportunities
The Rockefeller Brothers Fund announces the continuation of the Charles E. Culpeper Scholarships in Medical Sciences to support the career development of academic physicians. Nominations will be accepted through August 15. Up to four awards of $100,000 per year for up to
three years will be made to US medical schools or equivalent educational institutions. For more information, visit www.rbf.org or call the Rockefeller Brothers Fund at 212-812-4200.
HMS Women’s Health grant Harvard Medical School’s Center of Excellence in Women’s Health is taking applications for one-year grants for up to $45,000 each to be awarded to HMS faculty to help initiate new, collaborative, inter-institutional projects in basic research, clinical research, health services/population sciences research, or education in any area of women’s health. Applications must include collaboration between investigators at two systems or institutions that are part of HMS’s Center of Excellence in Women’s Health. Letters of intent are due on July 14, and applications are due on August 15. For more information, contact Stephanie Mandell at 432-4372 or smandell@hms.harvard.edu.
Sundry Fund Accounts
Effective May 1, 2000, sundry funds collected by BWH, including royalties, endowment income and philanthropic contributions, will be eligible to receive varying rates of interest tied to fund balances. Fund balances between $50,000 and $100,000 will receive the current Partners short-term interest rate; balances between $100,000 and $1 million will receive PHS long-term rates; and funds in excess of $1 million will receive the PHS long-term rate plus 100 basis points. Consistent with current practice at Harvard Medical School, these funds will be subject to a 12 percent tax to support institutional operations upon their expenditure.
Dinner Pays Tribute to BWH Nurses
More than 500 nurses packed the room on May 17, for the annual dinner at the Westin Hotel in Waltham to recognize Yolanda “Yoly” Harmuth and other recipients of various nursing awards—including the Mary S. Fay Essence of Nursing Award and the Mary S. Fay Enrichment Award—as well as to honor all BWH nurses, who strive to give the highest quality of compassionate care to their patients every day.
“This dinner is being held in your honor, with the intent of celebrating your ongoing contributions and achievements,” Mary S. Fay, RN, MS, executive director, Center for Excellence in Nursing Practice, addressed the nurses during the dinner. “You are an essential part of the patient care team, and tonight was the hospital’s way of saying, ‘Thank you for all you do.’ You truly make a difference to us, and to our patients and their families.”
Harmuth was this year’s winner of the Essence of Nursing Award. The three groups of winners of the first annual Enrichment Award were William T. Briggs, RN and Nicki Gilboy, RN, both of Emergency Services; Maureen Allen, RN, BSN, and Kathleen M. Howard, RN, BSN, both of the Neonatal ICU; and Gabriele Harrison, RN, also of the Neonatal ICU.
The vision and understanding of Estrellita and Yousuf Karsh recently led them to create the Mary S. Fay Enrichment Award, an annual grant meant to support projects conducted by BWH nurses through the Center for Excellence in Nursing Practice. Thanks to the generosity of Marshall Wolf, MD, vice chairman for Medical Education, the award will be able to annually assist three projects instead of one.
Speakers at the gala dinner included Fay; Jeffrey Otten, president, BWH; David Sugarbaker, MD, executive vice chairman, Surgery; Anne E. Belcher, PhD, RN; Estrellita Karsh, friend of Nursing; and Nancy Kruger, vice president of Patient Care Services and Chief Nursing Officer.
Telemedicine is finalist for Smithsonian Award
Partners Telemedicine has been named a finalist for a Computerworld Smithsonian Award. Nominated by Bill Gates, chairman and chief executive officer of Microsoft Corp., in the Medicine category, Partners Telemedicine is part of a collection that includes more than 440 of the year's most innovative applications of technology from 38 states and 21 countries. Partners Telemedicine was named one of five finalists in its category. Other finalists include the American Red Cross and the National Marrow Donor Program. Award recipients for each of 10 categories were named at a ceremony on June 5 in Washington, D.C.
Improving the Discharge Summary Process
A team lead by Anthony Whittemore, MD, chief medical officer, and Robert Goldszer, MD, director, Specialty Services, has developed a plan to streamline the discharge summary process. The new process will utilize currently available applications in our clinical computing system to generate a discharge summary when the discharge orders are written for all patients who have been in the hospital for six days or less. Currently the discharge orders generate a summary for patients staying less than three days.
The goals of the new process are to:
1. Produce a comprehensive, useful discharge summary;
2. Have the information available at the time of discharge;
3. Improve our patient outcomes and satisfaction; and
4. Improve the information provided to our referring and receiving physicians.
Other members of this improvement team include Jackie Raymond, director of Health Information Services; Joanne Hogan, director of Care Coordination; Andrew Sussman, MD, medical director of BWPHO; Michael Gustafson, MD, director of Quality Measurement; Eric Poon, MD, medical resident; and Deb Thomas, clinical systems manager for Information Systems.
Education sessions and information will be offered to the incoming housestaff. If you would like to assist with this project please call Dr. Robert Goldszer at ext. 8988 or email to rgoldszer@partners.org
Labor Relations Update
Representatives from BWH and the Massachusetts Nurses Association (MNA) began meeting in early June to begin the process of renegotiating the MNA contract. The current contract expires on September 30, 2000. Representatives from both parties will meet monthly throughout the summer, then weekly during the month of September, to negotiate terms. Bulletin and PSU will keep you updated on the progress of negotiations throughout the coming months. The hospital's negotiating team is optimistic that it will reach an agreement that will be in the overall best interests of the hospital, our employees and patients.