12 Years of Work on our Vision: Transforming to Meet the Needs of the Community
In 2010, it was clear that the Greater Baltimore Medical Center was an excellent hospital with great clinicians, and Gilchrist was doing an excellent job with end-of-life care. But the Board recognized significant gaps. We did not have a true systematic approach to managing people with chronic disease or to prevent chronic disease. Patients were often left to connect their own care between office visits with their primary care physician and specialists and inpatient stays. The Board saw the need to create a true system of care that the patient would experience as a system. This notion required an accountability function, and the Board agreed with the adoption of the patient-centered medical home advanced primary care model.
The Board also realized that if the goal was to keep people out of the hospital, then adding more hospitals was not a necessary step. They also saw that relative smallness would make it easier to transform and maintaining local control will accelerate the rate of meaningful change. They therefore decided to retain our independence from multi-hospital companies.
Creating a system that the patient experiences as a system required a single medical record for each individual. So, we invested the resources in Epic.
So, what has this meant for our patients and the community? The list of improvements is long! Advanced primary care has brought improvements in addressing behavioral health needs. All patients are screened for depression, and if they fail the screen, they are referred immediately to the behavioralist in the practice who works with the primary care provider to come up with a treatment plan right away. Our Sexual Assault Forensic Examination (SAFE) and Domestic Violence (DV) programs have totally redesigned the care for sexually or physically abused individuals who comes to our Emergency Department. We know precisely how many diabetic patients we have, and we work directly with each of them to keep their diabetes under control. We responded to the opioid epidemic and the mental health crisis by adding masters-prepared behavioralists, addiction specialists and psychiatrists to our patient-centered medical homes and by adding peer counselors to the Emergency Department to work with substance-addicted patients. Gilchrist added in-home primary care for frail elders who had difficulty coming to the advanced primary care centers. We built strong programs in palliative care and integrative care for symptom management to further improve our care of those with chronic disease. These are just a few of the powerful changes that we have made to our system to move us toward our vision of being the community-based true system of care that has the capability of managing the health of a population and of delivering to every patient, every time, the care that we want for our own loved ones.
I am so proud of the improvements we have made, and I am really excited about continuing toward our vision and extending our work to marginalized populations in the city of Baltimore.
I am proud to let you know that SIX of our colleagues were chosen by their peers from thousands of nurses in the Baltimore region. These phenomenal clinicians have been recognized as Baltimore magazine’s 2022 Excellence in Nursing winners! Please join me in congratulating the following nurses:
Evelyn Bowmaster, MAS, BSN, RN, CHPO, CPPS, Director of Quality & Patient Safety, Ambulatory Services
Rosalyn B., BSN, RN, FNE-A, FNE-P, SAFE Nurse and Domestic Violence Strangulation Liaison
Anne Conrad, MS, RN, CCRN, RN Care Manager
Pam G., MSN, RN, FNE-A/P, SANE-A, SANE-P, SAFE Nurse
Evette H., MA, BSN, BS, RN, FNE A/P, SAFE Nurse
JoAnn Parr, MSN, MS-HCM, RN, C, Director of Care Management and Continuing Care Services
Also, it's that time again when Baltimore magazine is collecting votes from area physicians for its “Top Doctors” issue. Docs, please vote for the colleagues you most respect! The survey is found here.
I want to thank everyone who participated in our seventh annual Walk a Mile in Their Shoes event. Please know that you can still log your miles and donate here until 11:59 p.m. this Saturday, April 30.
Since we are still dealing with the COVID 19 pandemic, we again had in-person and virtual options for this event. We had approximately 300 participants, who walked close to 80,000 miles and helped us raise more than $100,000 for our SAFE and DV programs. I am proud that GBMC continues to be a leader in helping the victims of sexual assault and domestic violence and in educating the community to reduce these attacks. It is great to see the ongoing strong support of our community, and I am grateful for their commitment to the cause even during the pandemic. Walk a Mile in Their Shoes allows GBMC to provide these necessary services 24 hours a day, 7 days a week at no cost to our patients.
I want to thank the GBMC Foundation and all parties who worked together to make this year’s event another success!
Congratulations to our 2021 Compassionate Caregiver Award winner, Cheryl Miles - Environmental Services, SICU! Congrats also to the other finalists:
Jeffrey Alvarez, GNA – Sub Acute Unit 54
Sandy Rector, M-Div., BCC – Spiritual Support
Wendy Riggin, RRT – Respiratory Therapy
Kelly Truax – SAFE & Domestic Violence Program.
Click here to watch the award show!
This week is Medical Laboratory Professionals Week. Our medical laboratory professionals work tirelessly to provide highly reliable evidence-based care to our patients. These behind-the-scenes heroes are essential members of the patient care team. We are very fortunate to have an outstanding team of pathologists, technicians, phlebotomists, and support staff who truly do their part to drive us toward our vision. I am so proud of our lab team who have always demonstrated excellence. Thanks to our lab personnel for all that they do!
Welcome to Maryland
Last week, it was announced that Mark T. Gladwin, MD, a leading heart, vascular, and lung physician-scientist, was named as the next dean of the University of Maryland School of Medicine (UMSOM). I want to congratulate Dr. Gladwin on his selection.
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