“ It’s the one area in our department where one mistake can cost a patient his life. Jennifer Backstrom, head of hospital lab ”
Jennifer Backstrom, head of the Cook County North Shore Hospital lab, intends to offer patients state-of-the-art services, even when that requires that her staff learn entirely new ways of doing things. Such is the case with a new system of evaluating blood samples.
The lab has purchased equipment that uses a gel to give precise readouts profiling a patient’s blood in order to ensure that people needing blood receive a product that is compatible with their own.
Reading results with the new system will be less open to interpretation than with the former system. “It’s the one area in our department where one mistake can cost a patient his life,” Backstrom told the hospital board on November 22, 2010. Even a small clerical error can be deadly. “You can’t make mistakes,” she said. “You just can’t. It’s just too serious and important.”
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Years ago, the hospital had a list of local people with various blood types who were willing to come in and donate blood as needed. Thehospital now keeps a variety of blood types on hand from Memorial Blood Centers and can appeal to an emergency courier service if necessary. If nobody needs the blood, however, it gets shipped out to a busier hospital before its expiration date to ensure that it will be used.
The staff will start using the system between mid-December and January, and double-checking the results will be part of the protocol.
Backstrom also noted that oxycodone has been added to the protocol that screens for drugs of abuse.
Year-end financial outlook
Controller Yvonne Gennrich is expecting a loss of about $200,000 for the year, less than the half-a-million-dollar loss that was expected. She pointed out the significant difference in outpatient revenues from one season to the next, with October revenues at $698,173, compared to the $991,511 generated in July.
The board will vote at its December meeting on whether to go with a levy of $1.2 million, up from $425,000 this year. Even if they go with this amount, Gennrich said, they would still be facing a loss of over $250,000 for 2011.
Board member Tom Spence said that when he recommended the possibility of a $1.2 million levy, he thought they would either lower it or have a surplus of money left over. He said he was surprised to see a large deficit projection anyway. “I thought that was leaving us a big fat cushion,” he said.
“We’re still not getting much public reaction,” board member Howard Abrahamson said about the proposed levy amount. The December meeting, at 9:30 a.m. on Thursday, December 23, will be the hospital’s first ever truth-in-taxation meeting.
County Commissioner Jim Johnson said truth-in-taxation meetings don’t usually bring in a lot of people. “Where the rubber meets the road,” however, he said, is when people see on their tax bills the percentage their taxes will increase. Then they call county Auditor- Treasurer Braidy Powers, he said.
Mammography equipment upgrade
Hospital Administrator Kimber Wraalstad told the board they are looking at replacing their mammography equipment with a machine that can produce sharper images. St. Luke’s Vice- President Sandra Barkley said that switching to digital mammography at St. Luke’s resulted in more patients being called back for further testing and diseases being caught that would not have shown up on the previous equipment.
Increasing maintenance problems are occurring with the machine that processes mammography images taken with the current equipment. A radiation physicist who inspected the hospital’s mammography equipment noted that the hospital should consider transitioning to digital mammography.
” Paramedic services
Wraalstad reported that they would soon advertise for one or two paramedics. “There are experienced paramedics who have expressed an interest,” she said, but added, “You don’t count your chickens before they hatch.” The 2011 budget includes one paramedic position.
A paramedic on staff could help with ambulance transfers needing advanced life support.
Flu vaccine
Joan Abrahamson of the Sawtooth Mountain Clinic board reported that plenty of flu vaccine is available this year.
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