| OCR Text |
Show HILLTOP TIMES Maj. Rodney Jorstad, 75th Medical Support Squadron Pharmacy Flight commander, shows Col. Linda Medler, 75th Air Base Wing commander, different improvements and future plans for the pharmacy during the medical clinic renovation project. GROUP From page 4 to help them with their workflow." Physical Therapy gets room to grow, stretch Injuries are a reality of war and the 75th MDG Physical Therapy clinic saw a significant increase in their demand since the peak of the war on terrorism. "I've been (in the Physical Therapy clinic) three and a half years. When I arrived we were seeing active duty, dependents and retirees," says Lt. Col. Therese Bohusch of the 75th MDG Physical Therapy clinic, "and within a year that changed to seeing active duty only due to rise in demand." Around the same time the Tricare Management Activity recognized the potential to recapture the dependent and retiree care on base by applying for contract dollars to hire additional manpower. A space expansion project to accommodate the new staff and anticipated patients is due to begin shortly. "The expansion will last throughout most of 2009, which will limit our services since we will be down to about 50 percent of our space for the construction," Bohusch explains. "During that time we expect to refer more people to our Tricare network physical therapists. Ultimately at the end of our expansion project, we hope to get everyone back into our clinic." The physical therapy staff will also expand with the project. In addition to their current staff of two physical therapists, three technicians, all of whom are active duty, and one administxatiy^su^prt; employee, clinic will contract one more Phy^ical^^rap^^and threeJiUi physical therapist assistants. "Eventually we would like to extend our services to active duty dependents and retirees," Bohusch says. SENIOR AIRMAN JASON BURTON U.S. Air Force specific care needs, and their number of visits to the clinic decreases." The Disease Management model fit perfectly into the overall goal of the medical clinic. "We have a primary care facility that is focused exclusively on prevention; prevent first, heal second," Durkin said. Getting the message to the community i\ IT Airmen Clinic, Right Medicine to improve flow Imagine that you have to operate out of six offices instead of just one, and each office was organized slightly different than the others. This would add more time and frustration to an average workday, and then add on to that fact that the offices were not arranged in a convenient manner for you to move from one to the next. These were just a few challenges the staff at the Airmen Clinic and Flight Medicine were dealing with and decided to do something about. To accommodate the necessary changes for efficiency and standardized work areas, the Optometry Clinic, which shares the annex with the Airmen Clinic and Flight Medicine, will be moved to another area of the medical clinic in the near future. This will allow the Airmen Clinic and Flight Medicine to expand a bit and Public Health will be placed in the annex, since Public Health delivers deployment medicine, force health management and community health. "Col. Chini's vision all along has been for that annex area to be a one-stop shop for the Airmen, where 90 percent of what they need in the Med Group gets taken care of in this annex," says Bohusch. The annex area will be renovated to allow the Airmen Clinic and Flight Medicine to optimize their space by accommodating more examination rooms and an additional procedure room. The goal is to utilize the layout more efficiently and, like the pharmacy, eliminate the excess running-around for TIMES January 8, 2009 LEE ANNE HENSLEY/Hilltop Times Master Sgt. Bradley Martin, Non-Commissioned Officer in Charge, Dental Lab, prepares his workstation at the 75th Medical Group's dental lab. Martin and his teammate, Tech. Sgt. Brian Arendes, successfully process more than 1,300 dental cases per year, which is four times the case load processed several years ago by a five-person team in the dental lab due to their years of experience and acquiring state-of-the-art machinery. the staff. "Our biggest complaint from our clients is wait time, which is directly related to space issues," explains Master Sgt. Michael Quoma, Non-Commissioned Officer in Charge of the Airmen Clinic. "Once we have centrally located, easy-to-find doctors and have our nurses closer to the providers, this will eliminate the time and energy spent on them trying to find one another." Part of the space expansion goal is to standardize each examination to be as similar as possible, allowing the providers to work more efficiently. If everything is located in the same place in each room and every piece of equipment operates the same, it will eliminate time wasted on searching and adapting to different equipment. "The Standard Work is an AFSO21<initiative, (which) was a follow-up to two different AFSO21 events, that allows the patient to know what to expect and know the process flow," explains Lt. Col. Arthur Durkin, 75th MDG chief nurse executive. "So we created a standard operating procedure to ensure the format doesn't vary from technician to technician." Another goal of the Standard Work initiative is to standardize electronic medical records to allow the doctors to search for data. "One of the things we have initiated is to designate a technician to ask the patient (a health question) and enter it into a database of medical records," Durkin says. "Eventually, when our electronic medical records system gets savvy enough, we will be able to drill down into that information and better identify what our population actually does:" More space, more efficiency and less wasted time will equal happier clients for the two clinics. "It will be a boon to our patients to have more space and happier, more productive employees," Quoma says. "It will improve care overall." Disease Management team focuses on prevention "Since we are a Continuous Deployment Model base, which calls for one in five providers to be deployed at any time, we need to posture our staff to deal with the continuous deployments we face," Durkin said. "When that CDM was established, we set up clinics The 75th MDG has a wealth of knowledge that can empower its community, and the group is not keeping the messages to itself. One obvious way the medical group broadcasted the message was to place plasma screen televisions in populated areas, such as the waiting areas in the medical clinic and in the Base Exchange food court, which display health tips and messages on successive slides. The medical group also sends representatives to make public appearances at military spouse club events and other family events. "Eventually we would like The medical group set up to extend our services to an information booth at the Sesame Street Live event active duty dependents this past September to educate the parents about and retirees." immunizations, nutrition LI COL THERESE BOHUSCH, and breastfeeding aware75th Medical Operations ness: The-gronpri'S-aiso^'' M Squadron Primary Care Team working together with the Health and Wellness cSSer Flightc6mmandefrftih£gards to tackle tobacco cessation, to physical therapy services stress and anger management, nutrition, fitness and lifestyle education. One medical clinic doctor, that had a doctor, secondary Capt. Marcus Luce, initiated provider, a physician's assistant the Reach Out and Read proand support staff so anytime one of them was deployed, they gram, which has donated more would have a backup staff. Part than 3,000 books to children and teaches parents how they of that was breaking up these can read to their children more managers and we made the effectively. Dr. Luce demonconscious decision to take them strates this technique to the out of the clinics and centralparent and child in his clinic, ize them so that we could have which establishes a positive a centralized disease managefirst impression on the child to ment for the whole facility." make him more comfortable The Disease Management with the pediatrician. team targets patients diagnosed with asthma, hypertension, diaImproving the future betes or cervical dysplasia, and they work in conjunction with The 75th MDG has only the primary care providers to tackled the top portion of its offer specialized care for the list of desired improvements. patient and they also enroll the Col. Dun reports the group's patients in classes to educate future goals include improvthem on how to better care ing Women's Health, referral for themselves. The goal is to management and standard mitigate or prevent further work. They are also dedicating diseases and complications that a team to ensure that the group typically afflict patients with is operating on a daily basis in these diseases. In the business compliance with all regulatory aspect, these diseases can be organizations, such as OSHA, time consuming for the providAccreditation Association for er to treat and cause the patient Ambulatory Health Care and to return to the medical facility the Unit Compliance Inspecmore frequently for disease-retion/IG team, and dedicating lated complications. an administration team for the ' clinic. "Our disease managers have been heralded by the Air Force "We are constantly engagand other services who have ing in work flow analysis and asked us to attend conferencseeking opportunity to improve es," Durkin says. our processes and think 'outside the box.' We currently Among them is Capt. Tracy have an on-going effort to stand Rue, Nurse Manager Family up a personnel administration Medicine, who will be attending flight that will handle anything the American Academy of Amadministrative to this building," bulatory Care Nursing confersays Dun. "Be it OPRs or EPRs, ence in March to share Disease PowerPoint presentations, comManagement's model and its mittee minutes, memorandums, successes. "We are one of the first fam- this core team will actively manage these products." ily practice facilities in the Air Force to have this program," Although the medical group Rue says. "Disease Manageis small in number, it doesn't ment gives the patients a place stop them from taking on goals to go, a point of contact for twice their capacity. |
