Q & A

Good morning!

Today, I’ll respond to a few of the comments and questions sent to me through the VC Notes inbox. I appreciate and read all your submissions and each one gets sent to a subject matter-related Medical Center leader.

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Q:  Will anything be done about the outrageously long Emergency Room wait times? I am here now with my grandmother who has pancreatitis, and she has been waiting for 5 hours. There is also a man here who has multiple bullet fragments in his foot who has been here just as long.

A:  There can be many and a wide range of reasons that someone experiences a longer-than-anticipated wait for Emergency Department care, but I’ll focus on a couple.

First, emergency rooms do not necessarily see patients on a first-come, first-served basis. Acuity level plays a prominent role in determining the order in which patients are seen. Similarly, severe cases can be taken back in an order of arrival manner, but that can always be disrupted by patients who present to the ED with higher-level needs. And as the state’s highest-level trauma center, we frequently have patients arriving with very severe injuries or illnesses.

A second reason that it may take several hours for a patient to be seen is because of the ongoing challenge of inpatient throughput. It’s a domino effect, in essence. For an ED room to be available for a new patient, it must become available either by someone being discharged from the ED or transferred to another part of the hospital. And, for that to happen, space must become available, most times because a patient was discharged out of our hospital, opening a med-surg or critical care bed.

It sounds relatively simple, but certainly is not. Patient discharge is a complicated process and can be impeded by factors that we have little or no control over, like medication or post-hospital equipment delivery delays, family members late to pick up, or the post-acute facility a patient is going to is just not ready for the transfer.

To help in instances when a patient is ready to leave, but something is holding up discharge, the discharge lounge located on the first floor of the Conerly Critical Care Tower near the SICU waiting room has made a huge impact. Open 5 days a week, this space can comfortably accommodate discharged patients until they are ready to leave the hospital. 

More recent efforts to improve throughput include new agreements that will allow for more flexibility to transfer some patients to long-term care facilities and asking our hospitalists to help ensure patients nearing discharge are getting the right level of care at the right time, which can expedite the process when it does come time for them to leave. Above all, we need to be up-front and honest with our patients and keep them updated along the process. Keeping them informed can go a long way in easing what can sometimes become a frustrating situation.

I could go on further with this topic, but I think you get the idea. Throughput and discharge are complex, and all the elements must be considered to get to the right formula. We are putting in a lot of effort on this and seeing positive momentum and I appreciate the diligence leaders and others are putting into trying to get this right. Patient flow is a team sport, which is why numerous facility leaders have been working to make changes that will alleviate the burden on the emergency rooms and other patient care areas. Yes, this is hard, but every positive step we make is worth the effort.

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Q:  Is there a way we could get an online phone number list containing a main number for each unit? (Like the unit secretary number/OR control desks/ IR/ Lab Departments, etc.) I know we can always call the operator, but sometimes the number they transfer us to is not exactly what we were looking for. It would be nice to look up the number ourselves.

A:  Department phone numbers have been available on the intranet for some time now. I mentioned this in my Aug. 26, 2022 VC Notes, which was right after DIS activated it. Since not everyone may know this directory is available, I wanted to again bring attention to it.

At the top of the UMMC Intranet, you can input into the search bar the name of the department whose main phone number you want. You should receive a listing of the employees associated with that department as well as a main phone line. Here’s an example using “medicine” as the search term: https://intranet.umc.edu/search.aspx?q=medicine

If you want to see a full list of all department main phone numbers, you can find that here. If your unit/department isn’t in this list, you can request it be added using this form: https://secureforms.umc.edu/forms/Department-Directory-Update.aspx. Also, use that form if your department’s number is incorrect or has changed.

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Q:  This week the Research Wing and the "old" Guyton Building experienced a loss of electrical power for approximately seven minutes following a fire alarm. While seven minutes is relatively brief, it's long enough to adversely affect an experiment or clinical assay. More importantly, it's long enough to compromise the function of important safety equipment like biosafety cabinets that are common in clinical and research labs. I understand that power disruptions like this are unpredictable and unavoidable, but I think it's important to explain the cause of the outage and what steps are being taken to try to prevent a recurrence.

A:  I’m sorry if there was negative impact to any research projects due to the power disruption in that building late last month.

Facilities Services conducted a thorough inspection following the outage and found the likely cause to be a short in the medium voltage distribution system resulting from lingering moisture from the severe cold weather event early in January.

Facilities performs both scheduled inspections and focused checks following events like that cold weather event to help maintain critical systems and identify needed repairs before they cause havoc. But, sometimes, the unpredictable will happen and that’s the case here.

If you have some critical equipment that you believe needs to have an emergency power source, please contact Facilities Services at 4-1400 to discuss what is available.

Q:  There was a period of time when the parking lot was fully lit again, now that isn't so. Can we please have better lighting for when you are walking at night?

A:  I assume you are referencing the stadium parking lots, which should all be lit up at night. If you see one or more lights that are not working properly, please report it to Facilities Services immediately by calling 4-1400.

Just last week, Facilities completed another upgrade to stadium lot lighting, so, there shouldn’t be issues, but let them know if there are.

If you end up parking your car in an area where it’s dimly lit because a light is out and want to get UMMC Police assistance to get to your car, please don’t hesitate to call them on their non-emergency number, 4-1360. Also, using the Alert U system’s Everbridge smartphone app can give you a direct video connection to UMMC Police for added peace of mind. Instructions on how to make sure you are connected to Alert U can be found here.

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Sticking with Alert U, I’ll end today by responding to a topic that several of you presented last month through the VC Notes inbox: using Alert U as a messaging tool in instances like last month’s severe weather event, which impacted some Medical Center operations. Going forward, we will use the Alert U program’s Everbridge smartphone app and texting system to make available broad-scope timely notifications somewhere other than just email.

Thanks for all your comments and questions. And thank you for all you do to push forward toward A Healthier Mississippi.