Blogs

November 11, 2011 - how one department helps another.

Nov 11, 2011 by Marc Strode, CEO
Folks,
Happy Friday!  Really looking forward to enjoying this awesome Fall Del Rio weather this weekend!  Who knew how big Pee Wee football could be around here.  The Chiefs are a game away from playing next weekend in Rams stadium, so I'll be pullin' for my twins as they take on Bracketville on Sunday.  Hope you have an awesome weekend, too.

Thanks a bunch to the nearly 300 who showed up at the Town Hall meetings this week.  We had a really good time.  We've come a long way from the days when you could count on one hand the people who showed up for these meetings.  As one person said, "why would we have gone?  all they had was bad news to deliver!"  Fast forward to 2011 and just the opposite.

This just hot off the press......the product evaluation team from Surgery has just recommended some new sterilization equipment that we are about to purchase that we think will significantly help turn around times between cases.  That's certainly a good thing, and the icing on the cake is they played hardball w/ the vendor and saved VVRMC nearly $12,000 on the purchase price!  That's a great job.  $12K we can put into something else (like flat screen TVs [keep reading!]).  So, I'm not sure who is on this committee, but on Monday I'll be seeking them out to shake their hand and congratulate them for kicking butt on this one. 

Back to the flatscreen TVs.  Our friends on Women's have been bugging us for a while to upgrade the TVs in their area.  Well, they've been heard!  We decided yesterday it was time to go ahead and upgrade and get rid of those 1984 models on a boomb.  You know it's bad when some of our younger patients who haven't hardly seen a tube TV mistook them for monitoring equipment!!  I wonder what those relics would bring on Ebay!  Anyhow, we're going w/ 32" flatscreen w/ built-in DVD players.  Hopefully our length of stay won't go up too much.....all kidding aside, these ladies are typically not sick and sometimes are with us on bedrest.  I think this will go a long way to helping our HCAHPS scores in that area.  No ETA yet on the install, but knowing Brett, I bet he'll time this one for a Women's Christmas stocking stuffer!! 

Women's, you too may want to thank your neighbors in surgery for freeing up the funds to make this happen.  Great teamwork in unsuspecting places!

Keep the Spirit,
Marc