CARROLL TOWNSHIP - Louis Panza is well aware that patients being released from the hospital often don't pay attention to follow-up instructions and - more often than not - end up back for treatment in a month or less.
The Monongahela Valley Hospital president and CEO's 87-year mother did just that.
"They're giving her instructions, and you can just see she just completely shut them off," said Panza, drawing laughter from the crowd at a Wednesday gathering. "All she's saying is, 'Lou, get the car. Get me home.'"
The new Monongahela Valley Hospital Primary Care Resource Center will attempt to solve that problem - and slash 30-day readmission rates - by engaging patients as soon as they come to the hospital.
Nurse care managers and a pharmacist will counsel patients, so additional visits will not be necessary.
"We want to treat our patients like they are your own mother," Panza said. "This is designed to not only support the physicians, but to support the patients. That's why we got into this business in the first place."
The four-room service facility, which opened June 13, targets patients with three chronic conditions: chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, congestive heart failure and coronary artery disease.
The center's staff comprises pharmacist Cara Anderson, registered nurses Deborah Holman and Sharon Nash, and lead care manager Susan Campus.
The center will provide one-on-one instruction, testing and basic follow-up care for patients, so they can take care of themselves at home. On Wednesday, hospital officials, staff members and dignitaries toured the site, located on the fourth floor of the west wing.
The space formerly housed a maternity ward.
The center was created in conjunction with the Pittsburgh Regional Health Initiative, the operational arm of the Jewish Health Care Foundation. Monongahela Valley Hospital will be a pilot program that other medical facilities may adopt in the near future.
Dr. Keith T. Kanel, the Initiative's chief medical officer, said the program stems from a previous project that reduced COPD patient readmissions by 44 percent.
"Our role is to come in and create resources at Mon Valley Hospital for which there's not really payment for right now, and you have external funding to make it happen. And we'll bring payment to the service once it's created," Kanel said.
"After two years of hashing it out, we got thumbs-up from the medical staff, and then the insurers loved it. Great ideas like this sustain themselves."
Holman cited the example of a Mid-Mon Valley patient with COPD. The woman, in a six-month period, racked up $179,000 in costs - including 10 emergency room visits and 26 days in the hospital.
Holman, who will counsel patients on smoking cessation and proper inhaler use, said her parents were smokers. Her mother died of COPD and her father died of lung cancer.
Many of these cases involve difficulties with inhalers and patients who cannot afford prescription medication. A grant from Highmark Blue Cross/Blue Shield, through Kanel's organization, will fund the center for three years.
"I don't want people to live that way, let alone to die that way," Holman said. "When we work with patients, we are their partners, and we want them to get well. Their families will also be able to come and be educated, and people are excited that they don't have to pay."
Dr. Karen Wolk Feinstein, Pittsburgh Regional Health Initiative president and CEO, said the idea for the center was 15 years in the making - born of a 1997 meeting with former longtime Monongahela Valley Hospital President and CEO Anthony Lombardi and Alan Guttman, then-chairman of the hospital board of trustees.
The group's first attempt to employ corporate model techniques into the health care industry involved drastically reducing deadly intravenous line infections in 40 area hospitals. The new methods reduced infections by nearly 70 percent, Feinstein said.
"Fifteen years ago, we could see the cost of health care was not sustainable, and the quality would not continue. But we wanted to have a voice in it and help shape it," Feinstein said.
"How do you contain the cost of care and, the 'ah-ha' moment was, how do you contain it by advancing quality? If we would not have succeeded initially, I would not be sitting here."
Feinstein lauded Monongahela Valley Hospital for its willingness to install common-sense solutions for its senior citizen population at the new center.
"There were many naysayers, and you can understand people would be skeptical. They said, 'After all these years, nobody else thought about doing this?' And all I could say was, 'No,' Feinstein said.
"Health reforms are here to stay. You can drag your feet, or you can lead. And I'm proud to say Mon Valley chose to lead."
