OLYMPIC MEDICAL CENTER'S

Putting a Neurologist in
Stroke Patients’ Rooms
In October 2010, Olympic Medical
launched TeleStroke, a program
developed for patients who arrive in the
emergency department with stroke-like
symptoms. An emergency medicine
physician evaluates the patient on-site,
and a board-certified neurologist at
Swedish Medical Center in Seattle is
available for consults via real-time video
communication 24 hours a day.
“When the service is needed, we send
a patient’s imaging tests and lab work to
a neurologist at Swedish Medical Center
electronically, and the neurologist speaks
with the patient, his or her family, and
an emergency medicine physician on a
monitor,” says Lewis. “TeleStroke is a big
step forward for stroke care, especially in
rural areas such as ours.”
Joining Together
In collaboration with Forks
Community Hospital and Jefferson
Healthcare, we set out to seek an
affiliation with a tertiary medical center
to allow each of our organizations to
bolster clinical care and give patients
access to services that can’t be found
on the North Olympic Peninsula. The
hospital partners reached out to seven
tertiary facilities in 2010 and will finalize
an affiliation with one in 2011.
“In challenging economic times,
affiliating with a tertiary medical center
will allow us to provide more high-quality
local services with greater efficiency,”
Lewis says. “As part of the affiliation, we’d
like to expand our cardiac, orthopaedic
and endocrinology services, as well as link
our EMR with theirs.”
Another Honor
for Home Health
In the fall of 2010, OCS HomeCare
and DecisionHealth named Olympic
Medical Home Health a Top 100 Home
Health Care Provider yet again. OCS
HomeCare and DecisionHealth, two of
the country’s foremost sources of home
care information, created the HomeCare
Elite designation in 2006 to recognize
the cream of the home health care crop.
Swedish Medical Center neurologists
can communicate directly with patients
and Olympic Medical Center emergency
medicine physicians via a live video feed.
Olympic Medical Home Health is one
of only 11 agencies nationwide to be
recognized in the Top 500 every year
since the award’s inception, and the
organization placed in the prestigious Top
100 during four of those five years.
“Olympic Medical Home Health is
the only Medicare-certified home health
provider in the region,” says Curry. “Our
dedicated professionals travel across a
large geographic area to provide care for
people where they’re most comfortable
– in their own homes.”
Pointing the Way for Patients
Sometimes hospitals can seem
a bit hard to navigate. That’s why
professional wayfinding experts worked
with Olympic Medical to help identify
places to install new signs around the
hospital. The wayfinding signs feature
photographs of local beaches and
forests, courtesy of the Port Angeles
Regional Chamber of Commerce.
“The hospital has undergone many
revisions throughout the years, but we
had not comprehensively addressed
signage until the fall of 2010,” Lewis says.
“Installing new signage was an example
of listening to what our patients and their
families were telling us and responding to
their concerns.”
Moving Forward With EMR
Last year was a landmark time for
EMR implementation, as Olympic
Medical Physicians’ primary care, specialty
and surgery clinics in Port Angeles and
Sequim joined the system. Thanks to the
EMR, providers can now access patients’
charts at a moment’s notice and send
electronic prescription orders directly to
the pharmacy.
“The goals of EMR are to improve
management of chronic diseases, facilitate
safer care and better communication,
and increase the efficiency of health care
delivery,” Lewis says. “It’s been a long
journey to implement EMR – one that
will continue in 2011 and beyond – but
the benefits are worth it.”
For more information about everything
that’s happening at Olympic Medical, visit
www.olympicmedical.org.
www.olympicmedical.org 5