Latest / Becker’s Healthcare Podcast / Rural Healthcare Reimagined: Innovation at Beauregard Health System

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Rural Healthcare Reimagined: Innovation at Beauregard Health System · Becker’s Healthcare Podcast

0:00
Hi, everyone, and welcome to the Becker's Healthcare
0:02
Podcast.
0:03
My name is Cathy Turner. I'm the chief
0:05
nurse executive at Meditek, and I'm excited to
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welcome our guest, Tracy Thibodeau, the CEO of
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Beauregard Health System, a rural independent
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healthcare provider in DeRidder, Louisiana.
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Today we will be talking with Tracy about
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the organization's
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proactive approach to clinical excellence and how they're
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leveraging technology to improve patient outcomes.
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We'll also discuss a very important and timely
0:28
topic, which is how independent rural hospitals
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can thrive through smart technology adoption
0:34
and collaboration
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while staying true to their community mission.
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Tracy, thank you for joining us today.
0:41
Oh, thank you, Kathy. It's a pleasure to
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be with you today. So I know Beauregard
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Health System serves a community, a rural community
0:48
with unique healthcare needs. Can you talk a
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little bit about Beauregard Health System, about the
0:53
region you serve, and the overall population health?
0:57
Sure. We are a 49
1:00
licensed bed general acute care
1:03
hospital.
1:04
We have
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10 freestanding
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clinics, four of which are accredited rural health
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clinics.
1:12
We serve a population in our parish or
1:14
county of about 36,000.
1:17
It's about a 1,200
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square mile footprint,
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so we are certainly a rural area
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and a HPSA
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designated area.
1:27
We are in Southwest Louisiana, so just above
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the heel of the boot, and it's about
1:32
an hour and a half drive in any
1:34
direction
1:35
for our community to find a higher level
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of care.
1:39
Oh, that's so important in terms of the
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clinical excellence that you have really
1:44
embarked on for your organization.
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Tell us a little bit about that and
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how you define clinical excellence and how that's
1:51
evolved over years.
1:53
Yeah, so in rural communities, you know, we
1:56
can't be
1:57
everything to everybody, you know, we just don't
1:59
have the resources and
2:10
performance in the things that we do provide.
2:14
Pursuit of excellence is an exercise into perpetuity,
2:17
so it'll be something that we
2:19
do today and into the future always,
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but really striving to
2:27
provide a consistent experience
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for our community and our patients.
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We want to be able to efficiently
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deliver
2:35
the most appropriate care
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at all times.
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And the underlying
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factor in our ability to continue to serve
2:45
our community well is that our community
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trusts
2:49
that we are committed to excellence
2:52
and
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that we are constantly looking to continuously
2:57
improve
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in patient experience,
3:00
in clinical care and in
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performance benchmarks.
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So,
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sometimes in rural communities,
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hospitals and healthcare providers can get a bad
3:10
rap because we are human beings taking care
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of human beings and humans can be flawed.
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Humans make judgments sometimes.
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And so,
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our
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goal then is to
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really
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try to take the variability
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out of the human
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aspect of healthcare
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by creating
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appropriately
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structured
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processes
3:38
and systems
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that help us mitigate human error and human
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judgment calls and really
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provide a consistent or a high reliability
3:49
organization
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that
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has very little variability
3:53
in care
3:55
management and care delivery.
3:57
Well, and I think that's very evident in
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one of the projects that you've embarked on,
4:02
that being one of your quality improvement projects
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was to reduce sepsis
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rates. What led you to that initiative, and
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how did you leverage Meditek
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Expanse EHR
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to support that effort?
4:14
Yeah. Sepsis is one of our projects that
4:17
we are very proud of, we're investing heavily
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into,
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and seeing some great early returns.
4:24
What led us to focus on sepsis is
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sort of this perfect storm of benchmarking our
4:30
performance and so our baseline data was not
4:34
strong.
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We had a team of our leadership
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from the organization
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attend, you know, some Lean Six Sigma training
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and they were tasked with picking a project.
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And because of our performance
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in sepsis,
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our baseline
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of thirty three percent
4:52
detection,
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the team said, hey, this is an area
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we definitely need to put some attention and
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resources and tools to
5:00
improving our performance. And so the team,
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with
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ER staff, nurses,
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ED
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leader,
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chief nursing officer involved,
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and clinical analyst involved, and our chief medical
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officer as our physician champion,
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as well as the ED physicians,
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said let's do this. And
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we established
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the project charter and
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started collecting data
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and we were fortunate in this process to
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have, through a relationship,
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an opportunity
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to try a diagnostic
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tool
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on a pilot
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timeline
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of one year and they were looking for
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a rural market to pilot this diagnostic tool.
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We embarked on that, we received our equipment,
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it's a diagnostic
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test that's done from a lab draw,
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it's called Intellicep.
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And so,
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that tool returns
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pretty rapid result and it allows our team
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to
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act more quickly and appropriately
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based on
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the result of that diagnostic.
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And so what it's helping us do is
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save time
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and getting the patient in the right treatment
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quicker,
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saving money because we're not
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arbitrarily
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conducting these tests to try to rule out
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or diagnose,
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and it's helping us save lives because the
6:30
faster we can deliver the right therapeutic to
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a septic patient,
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the better their outcome.
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Based on this diagnostic tool, we have tweaked
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our processes
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and developed
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nursing
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protocol
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that are triggered
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depending on the result that is returned
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on the sepsis test.
6:52
Well, I have to congratulate you on being
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the only rural hospital in the country that
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has launched a sepsis protocol that really leverages
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new detection
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and response strategies.
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You talked a little bit about the people
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involved, the charter that you put together, and
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you've briefly mentioned technology.
7:09
Expand a little bit on that in terms
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of what technologies and workflow changes were a
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byproduct of this.
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Meditech is really
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the backbone
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of the sepsis management bundle
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and so when
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we
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are able
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to trigger this diagnostic,
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we receive the result,
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we have protocols
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built into Meditech
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that
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activate
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and guide our staff, our care team, and
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sometimes, you know, it's nurses that are not
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used to working together. We could get a
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physician who is new to our organization.
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And the value of the Meditech
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platform is that we've been able to hardwire
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these protocols,
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set up the appropriate alerts that are nuanced
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for our workflows and our care team.
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And so that
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is the process improvement that we've streamlined
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and optimized
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so that we have
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the patient and their
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data
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and we know exactly
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what to do. The team is
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perfectly
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guided
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in next steps and data points and all
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the things that allow the physician,
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the ER physician, to make the most accurate
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clinical judgment
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and therapeutic pathway
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for the patient.
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Well, and really what a phenomenal project for
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your staff to be involved with, but then
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as you said, you're, you know, saving patients'
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lives. It's it's just tremendous what you've done
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there.
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One of the other areas that you've focused
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on quality improvement is patient engagement,
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certainly
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vitally important in rural settings.
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What tools have you used there and what
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technologies have you adopted to really modernize patient
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communication and drive preventative
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care outreach?
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The resources that work often most closely with
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our patients
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are case management, social workers, our population health
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manager,
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and we just brought on a new patient
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and community engagement coordinator.
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And so,
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in leveraging these very critical human resources in
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our health system
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with the technology,
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again, with the backbone
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of the Meditech Expanse platform
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and
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the addition of
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partners
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like Arterra,
9:40
who have helped with
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the engagement aspect. So, patient reminders,
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text messages,
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appointment reminders,
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prompts to schedule,
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helping us identify
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through Meditech
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care gaps potentially,
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folks that are
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appropriate
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for
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the Medicare annual wellness visits,
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and folks with chronic care conditions that we
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need to very closely monitor
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from a prevention standpoint.
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And so this platform is Meditech Expanse
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and partnership with Arterra and Beauregard Health System,
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we've got this
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super team
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of
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clinicians and frontline
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folks near and dear to our patients.
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We've got the structure of the Meditech
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platform
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and the ability to, on a more personal
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level, really consistently
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engage
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and connect with our patients and that has
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been a very powerful tool.
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The patients
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appreciate
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being reminded and looked after
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and it has certainly
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helped our staff manage communications
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and
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diseases
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and chronic care activities
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and preventive activities
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through this technology.
10:59
Yeah. So important in those preventive activities.
11:02
And I know, you know, one of the
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other things that you've embarked on in terms
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of really caring for that community that is
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not within driving distance of you is telehealth.
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You wanna just mention some of those programs
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that you've been working on.
11:15
Yeah. So we are a TeleStroke
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spoke
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of a larger primary stroke center hub
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and,
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about two hours away from us and so
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when we get, patients
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where we are trying to either diagnose or
11:32
rule out stroke. We have the technology.
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We immediately
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get on camera, on screen with a neurologist
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in this
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metropolitan
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market,
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and
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we make the determination on the ground using,
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you know, our ER physicians,
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our advanced imaging and our telestroke partner to
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determine
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exactly the disposition and the care that each
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individual patient needs. And so we have the
12:02
opportunity to administer
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thrombolytics to patients that are appropriate recipients for
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that therapy
12:08
and then we can transfer them to this
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primary stroke center. And so we've seen some
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tremendous results in our in both the partnership
12:18
and the telemedicine
12:20
technology
12:21
and our ability to really affect patients,
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you know, in stroke, you know, time is
12:27
brain. And so, the faster we can identify
12:29
and act and administer therapeutics,
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the better the outcome for the patient, the
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better the quality of life, the fewer,
12:37
deficits oftentimes,
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for the patient. And so, that's been very
12:42
impactful.
12:43
Yeah, that's great. And I know certainly with
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the rural healthcare funding, telehealth has been a
12:48
big piece of that and really looking for
12:50
organizations to submit what they're doing there. So,
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you're certainly in a, in a good spot
12:56
in terms of that. And, you know, I
12:58
think your telehealth
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stroke is a good example of the affiliations
13:02
that you're doing with other organizations,
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so important
13:06
in independent rural hospitals.
13:08
And I know you've done a a fair
13:10
amount of work with grant funding and supplemental
13:12
opportunities.
13:13
Share a little bit more about how independent
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hospitals can thrive without losing their community identity.
13:19
Technology is certainly a driver of that, and,
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these telehealth programs that we just talked about
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are great examples of that.
13:28
Ways to
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look at
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applications
13:32
of automation and AI to help where many
13:36
organizations struggle with workforce
13:39
and these technologies and
13:41
systems,
13:42
when appropriately
13:45
managed and throttled, and we've got the safety
13:48
rails up for the use of AI in
13:50
the organization, but we can use these tools
13:54
to certainly leverage
13:56
workforce,
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leverage
13:59
technology and outreach,
14:01
leverage
14:03
our providers and feeding them
14:05
information, diagnostic
14:07
tools,
14:08
predictive analytics
14:10
certainly has great application in health care. But,
14:14
technology in my mind is one of the
14:17
best opportunities
14:18
for the rural transformation
14:20
fund,
14:21
so
14:22
that we're able to
14:24
offset some of the workforce challenges where it's
14:27
safe to do so and make sense to
14:29
do so, and we can
14:31
have
14:32
more reliable
14:34
systems, more sophisticated
14:36
systems.
14:37
And so,
14:38
our efforts
14:39
in our rural communities
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can be further enhanced
14:43
and
14:45
we can care for folks at home. Folks
14:47
that have to travel for health care
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may often be disadvantaged
14:51
from a cost perspective.
14:53
When you think about time away from work
14:55
and fuel
14:56
and food and
14:59
the cost of care in some of these
15:01
larger cities,
15:02
sometimes the patient is best served in their
15:05
community. And
15:07
we want to leverage
15:08
our human resources, our technologies,
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the funding available through these grant opportunities
15:14
to build great care systems for people right
15:17
here at home.
15:19
You know, I think your website is such
15:21
a testament
15:22
of that that proudly says community owned. You
15:25
know, it's such a reflection of who you
15:27
are and what you strive to do for
15:29
your community.
15:31
Well, as you look at the next three
15:32
to five years, what do you see as
15:34
the biggest opportunities and challenges for advancing clinical
15:38
excellence and innovation at Beauregard?
15:41
So I'll just start with, maybe the challenges
15:44
and try to end on a positive note.
15:46
And so, you know, obviously there's a lot
15:48
going on right now with policy changes and
15:51
reimbursement
15:52
and how do
15:54
we deliver
15:56
effective
15:57
care in a system
15:59
that just seems to work against us? The
16:01
regulatory burden, the policy burden,
16:04
the constant fight for revenue from insurance companies
16:08
and
16:09
all the hoops that we we jump through
16:12
to get paid.
16:13
So that continues to be a challenge, and
16:15
so I would love to see
16:17
policy
16:19
more aligned with
16:21
the providers
16:23
as opposed to other special interest groups and
16:26
other for profit entities.
16:28
It's sometimes very challenging
16:30
to meet the requirements, to pull the data,
16:33
to analyze the data with the limited resources
16:37
we have in rural communities. And so those
16:39
are some of the headwinds.
16:41
The opportunities,
16:43
I think, are many, especially around technology.
16:46
Love all the things that Meditech Expanse is
16:49
doing in focusing on
16:51
automation and AI in their platform,
16:54
the patient portal and developments and enhancements there
16:57
are vitally important for patient engagement, patient access,
17:01
and transparency.
17:02
The opportunity for
17:04
more sophisticated
17:06
automation AI, more sophisticated predictive analytics,
17:10
both in administrative settings and clinical
17:13
applications,
17:14
so that we can really
17:16
customize care, make it more personal to each
17:20
patient,
17:21
but be surrounded by the tools and the
17:24
data validation
17:26
that we need to do this effectively.
17:29
And so, I think just really continuing to
17:31
invest in
17:33
these super teams,
17:34
especially in rural communities
17:36
where you've got a clinical team on the
17:38
ground or virtual.
17:40
You've got a strong
17:42
electronic
17:43
health record system
17:45
that
17:46
performs well
17:47
and plays well with others so that we
17:49
can continue to optimize
17:51
the clinical care, the experience,
17:54
and then implementation
17:56
of effective and safe automation and AI
18:00
where it makes sense. I think that is
18:01
this trifecta
18:03
of clinical care,
18:05
technology,
18:06
and
18:07
the infrastructure
18:08
and processes
18:10
such as what Meditech Expanse provides for us.
18:14
Well, thank you, Tracy. I appreciate that. And,
18:16
you know, your passion for your community and
18:18
your organization is so evident. I appreciate you
18:21
sharing that with all of us. That brings
18:23
us to the end of today's conversation with
18:25
Tracy Thibodeaux from Beauregard Health System.
18:28
Thank you for joining us today, and Tracy,
18:31
thank you for sharing your insights and passion
18:33
for clinical excellence and advancing rural healthcare.
18:36
Thank you, Kathy. I appreciate the opportunity. We're
18:38
proud of what we're doing here, and we
18:41
will continue to pursue excellence into perpetuity. That's
18:45
for sure.