MedStaff Update: June 2018

New Course Helps Physicians Advance Communication Skills to Benefit Patients and Themselves
Advancing Communication Excellence at Stanford (ACES), a one-day communication workshop, is designed to advance providers’ relationship-centered communication skills with patients and families. Participants report feeling less burned out and more professionally fulfilled; and research indicates that relationship-centered communication yields higher patient satisfaction.

Integrated Strategic Plan Brings Together Stanford Medicine as a Community
For the first time, the three entities that comprise Stanford Medicine—Stanford Health Care (SHC), Stanford School of Medicine (SOM) and Stanford Children’s Health— worked together for over a year to create an Integrated Strategic Plan for their shared future.

ValleyCare Go Live: Nearly 1,600 New Users on the SHC EMR
With the flip of a switch at 4:44 am on March 3, all four locations of the Stanford Health Care-ValleyCare system shed their dependence on paper, and implemented the Epic Electronic Medical Record (EMR) system. While the cutover happened on March 3, it was preceded by more than two years of integrated planning, designing, building, testing and training to ensure that patient care and hospital and revenue operations would be enhanced with the move to an EMR.

Featured Guest Contributor Q&A with Michael O’Connell, Senior VP for UHA
Michael O’Connell joined Stanford’s University HealthCare Alliance on February 1 as its Senior Vice President of Operations. Prior to joining UHA, O’Connell held several leadership positions at Cleveland Clinic and was a health care consultant for the Advisory Board Company.

Patient Safety: Lessons Learned Back to Basics: Reading Reduces Medical Errors
The health care industry worldwide has seen an increase in the use of technology for both efficiency and safety. Barcode scanners can help prevent wrong patient, wrong concentration and wrong medication errors from occurring. Although technologies such as these have helped decrease errors, while also increasing efficiency, errors still occur. Technology is only as good as its user and there are still human factors involved in utilizing technology.