St. Luke’s Department of Surgery Management, Research Paper Example

All of the divisions of the St. Luke’s hospital are devoted to providing comprehensive care for their patience. The staff is trained to be compassionate, skill-fill and provide quality care.  The Department of Surgery’s Center performs over 400 surgeries per year. The U.S. centers are certified by the American College of Surgeons level 1A (“St. Luke’s” n.p.).  Their surgeries are classified as minimally invasive and their Bariatric Surgery service is recognized as one of their finest departments. St. Luke’s Hospital has locations in The Unites States, The United Kingdom, Malta, Greece, Ireland, Japan, and the Philippines. Based on in-depth research the following is an evaluation of the management measures St Luke’s has implemented to improve their efficiency.

As noted on the website “Our surgeons are leaders and innovators, teachers and researchers in the areas of minimally invasive, colorectal, bariatric, vascular, endovascular, robotically-assisted, and breast surgery, to name just a few.” This means that they are locally trained (“St. Luke’s Hospital”, n.p.).” The hospital has specialized in Bariatric and minimally invasive surgery since 1999.  All St. Luke’s Hospital’s institutes for Bariatric are affiliated with the local centers for obesity in the community. These surgeons specialize in the treating of the obese and they implement management protocols that prepare their nursing staff specifically for the concerns of the Obese, such as larger seating in waiting areas, respiration machines, and oxygen breathing devices, and specialized surgical devices. Obese patients undergoing surgery are at much higher risk of complications that can lead to fatal results. This is why St. Luke’s facilitates the top Bariatric surgeons in the region.

Over the course of a four year study of up to 40,923 surgical operations in St. Luke’s Hospital in Chicago, L.D. Edwards of the Rush Medical College found that, “the number of variables involved in the production of a single surgical wound infection are multitudinous, and

several articles have described transfer of bacteria to the wound by exogenous airborne spread, exogenous contact spread and endogenous contamination (Edward, 764)” Bacteria is spread through a wider range of methods in a hospital environment. One of the most noted is by touching hospital surfaces, but in numerous medical studies assessing the exchange of bacteria and fungi, food poisoning, urinary track infection and intestinal related issues are frequently a common source of exogenous infections.

During the 4 year study 40,923 operations were documented and evaluated and 44,716 surgical admissions were monitored. These surgical admissions were monitored for onset infection as well as community. One thousand eight hundred sixty-five patients were found to have 1966 surgical wound infections and 2056 remote infections which included 1652 hospital onset and 404 community onset infections (Edward,758).” In response to these studies, St. Lukes found that it needed to make drastic changes. In 2000, the hospital identified their infection results as a product of staff retention challenges, cost containment, and patient satisfaction. The CEO Rick Anderson addressed these issues by incorporating electronic Medication Administration records systems.

A major aspect that makes St. Luke’s Hospital so efficient in regards to management is their implementation of Electronic Medication Administration Records (eMAR). This transition to electronic data storage has made the hospital’s nursing staff as well as their physician staff more efficient.  It has also resulted in reduction of medical errors by 100% (Mekhjian, 530). St Luke’s Department of Surgery has implemented new initiatives in the field of critical care operations through use of electronic health records that can be transferred through cloud computing. This as well as a data efficiency tool, is a time management mechanism that is utilized to enhance a wide range of surgical procedures, such as Roux—en—Y gastric bypass, laparoscopic gastric band, single incision surgery, and sleeve gastrectomy(“St. Luke’s Hospital”, n.p.). Through the use of eMAR management tools, surgeons are able to better perform extensive surgeries that could have required massive amounts of building up and preparation to ensure efficiency. An example of this can be seen with the sleeve gastrectomy service. This operation is utilized as a method of time management for what is normally called a bypass surgery but is cut into two parts. The eMar system allows for this because it more accurate isolates the key data that informs medical professionals which candidates are eligible for the lighter operations verses is alternative.

In sum, St. Luke Hospital management methods, specifically as it relates to the surgery department is managed efficiently through the implementation of eMAR systems that better enhance the use of data records to help the start of new era in medical efficiency. There next step in the process for health management tools as noted by many of the researchers is to implement the use of robotics in collaboration with cloud computing and telecommute technology. St Luke’s staff as well as their ample variety of medical services can largely be attributed the efficiency of this system.

Work Cited

Mekhjian, H. Benefits Realized Following Implementation of Physician Order Entry at an Academic Medical Center. Journal of the American Medical Informatics Association, 9(5) (2002). 529–539

“St. Luke´s Hospital.” n.pag. Web. 13 Nov 2012. <http://www.stlukeshospitalnyc.org/Surgery.asp&xgt;.

Edwards, L.D. The Epidemiology of 2056 Remote Site Infections and 1966 Surgical Wound Infections Occurring in 1865 Patients: A Four Year Study of 40,923 Operations at Rush-Presbyterian-St. Luke’s Hospital, Chicag. 184. 1976. 758-766. Print. <http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1345421/pdf/annsurg00274-0110.pdf>.

“Bolstering Staff Soft Skills Helps Hospital Face Major Challenges. A Case Study of St. Luke’s Hospital & Health Network.” www.cpp.com 1-6. Web. 13 Nov 2012.