Children's Direct Reaches One-Year Anniversary of Expanded Services
Lessons learned from taking over transfers, direct admits and transport team dispatch are resulting in overall satisfaction with processes, communication.
After a full year of serving as the centralized point of contact for patient transfers, direct admissions and dispatching St. Louis Children’s Hospital’s transport team, Children’s Direct staff members have learned some important lessons: There is no such thing as too much communication. A strong medical director and support from the hospital’s Washington University School of Medicine partners are critical to success. Acceptance of change takes time.
“Throughout the past year we have listened to our customers—both external and internal—and tried to address their concerns as quickly as possible and make changes that enhanced our processes,” says Julie Bruns, director of the SLCH Answer Line/Children’s Direct. “Overall we’ve received high marks, especially in regard to our ability to quickly connect the referring and accepting physicians and our ability to provide preadmission clinical information to physicians and nurses on accepting units.”
Doug Carlson, MD, Children’s Direct medical director, believes that having a single point of contact and utilizing the expertise of attending medical control physicians has helped make patient transfers more efficient and safe for SLCH patients.
“In addition, our experienced pediatric nurses at Children’s Direct—all with either critical care or emergency unit experience—are the clinical equivalent to air traffic controllers with their quick coordination of all the complex steps to get a patient here safely,” he says. “Our first year has taught us a great deal about how we can continue to streamline the process. We actively seek input from our referring physicians so we can make transferring patients to us even easier.”
In total during 2010, Children’s Direct handled 12,806 calls. Included in that number were 3,558 transfers, a 4 percent increase over 2009; 2,896 referral calls, an 18 percent increase; and more than 3,500 phone consultation calls, an almost 400 percent increase.
“Part of these increases were due to our making Children’s Direct available 24 hours a day, seven days a week,” says Bruns. “In response to our higher call volume, we’ve adjusted our staffing to ensure we have enough people available during our busiest times.”
For the future, Children’s Direct will continue listening to its customers with the goal of improving its services and investigate other ways in which it can assist referring physicians and SLCH staff and departments.
New Children’s Direct E-Mail Aids Communication
Physicians short on time now have another way to communicate with St. Louis Children’s Hospital. Childrens_Direct@bjc.org is a central e-mail box to which physicians may send requests for services and general comments expressing concerns or kudos.
“I’ve long felt it was important to have a central communication vehicle for community pediatricians to interact with the hospital,” says Alison Nash, MD, St. Louis Children’s Hospital medical staff president. “This e-mail address can serve as a single point of communication that will be monitored and acted upon by hospital staff. And physicians who use this new e-mail system will receive follow up so they know their concerns are being addressed.”
She adds, “The community pediatricians on the Children’s Medical Executive Committee endorse this approach and join me in encouraging our colleagues to utilize it.”
E-mails sent to Childrens_Direct@bjc.org will either be routed to appropriate sources for follow up or will be handled by Children’s Direct staff members. They also will be tracked to ensure completion, and the resolution will be communicated back to the sending physician.
