It has only been about seven months since Rick Stevens took the helm at BJC HealthCare’s Christian Hospital, but he already can report progress for patients and the communities the North County hospital serves, including new hires, refurbished spaces and new community outreach programs designed to create future generations of health care professionals.
“We’ve already been able to recruit at least five new physicians coming here, two cardiologists, two hospitalists and a vascular surgeon,” Stevens said. “That means more care, better care for our patients.”
The 200-bed hospital has nearly 1,900 employees and growing recruitment for a number of disciplines. Christian has the busiest emergency department in the state in terms of patient volume (with 108,573 visits last year). Last year, the hospital spent $47.8 million in charity care, with total free care being 11.3 percent of its gross revenue.
Christian grooms its own health professionals through entry-level and preparatory programs. In January, Christian reached out to high school students for a new Medical Explorers Post, intended to introduce students to potential careers in health care.
“We have different departments they can rotate to and the director will tell them about the department,” Stevens said. The program for the first group of 10 students ends in May, followed by another group. (For more information on Medical Explorers Post, call 314-653-5032.)
“What we are trying to do is stimulate the interests of our young students in health care,” Stevens said. “If we can get them interested early enough, that would be great for us.”
Stevens hopes that student explorers are then filtered into one of the hospital’s pre-professional programs, such as its PCT (Patient Care Tech) Academy or its EMS Academy. The EMS Academy is a 12-week program that produces emergency medical technicians, or EMTs. It includes a Paramedic Academy, which was started in August 2016 and currently has 24 students enrolled.
“Our EMT and PCT academies are both gateways to entry-level positions,” Stevens said. “We see a lot of our PCTs that go on to become nurses. We want to introduce the next generation of health care leaders and health care professionals through the Medical Explorers Post.”
(To learn more about the PCT Academy, contact Jeremy Yates at jeremy.yates@bjc.org or 314-653-4329. To learn more about the EMS Academy, contact Josh Malson at joshua.malson@bjc.org or 314-653-5778.)
Stevens also has successfully recruited some mid-level professionals, with several nurse practitioners coming on board recently. They will work in a refurbished hospital. Currently, construction and renovation are underway on the hospital’s third floor to offer private rooms for patients.
“That project will be complete later this year in the August-September time frame,” Stevens said. “What that means is family members can have privacy with their loved one. It’s also been shown in the data that it aids in healing if you have a loved one in the room. Just from a healing standpoint – to be there with your loved one, not to have another roommate, the noise goes down, as does the infection rate.”
After the third floor, they will move on to renovations on the hospital’s ninth and then tenth floors. “By 2020, we’ll have a whole new look here at Christian,” Stevens said.
The hospital also is in the design phase for lobby renovation to improve esthetics and flow that will start later this year or early next year.
“We want to make sure it’s brighter,” Stevens said. “We are going to open it up and make sure that the patient flow is appropriate. We’ll have better patient flow, a brighter lobby, one that’s a welcoming environment, a healing environment, better than what we have now.”
Christian will also have a retail clinic coming soon in Hazelwood.
“We have a convenient care site that will be opening up in July in the Elm Grove Shopping Center off Lindbergh,” Stevens said. The Hazelwood convenient care center will be open 12 hours a day, seven days a week and will include a primary care office and a walk-in clinic.
Siteman comes to North County
There are big changes coming for the Northwest Healthcare campus on Graham Road in Florissant. BJC HealthCare is building a new Siteman Cancer Center location in North County.
“We are still finalizing plans, but it’s going to mean a lot to people here in North County and then also people on the Illinois side as well, because people don’t have to travel as far for their care should they develop cancer,” Stevens said.
Christian Hospital serves residents in North St. Louis County and patients from the Missouri cities of St. Louis, St. Charles, Rolla, as well as Alton, Illinois.
“When you have the Siteman name and the backing of Siteman, you have the best possible care that is coming to North County,” Stevens said, “and for it to be a part of Christian means a lot.”
Christian also can claim improvements in Joint Commission clinical quality measures and in patient satisfaction. The hospital earned 2016 Patient Perception Excellence in Healthcare Awards, a 5-Star Award for Cardiac Cath Lab and a 4-Star Award for Outpatient Services. Among its other national honors, in 2016 Christian ranked nationally in the top 10 percent for medical excellence for stroke care, and for patient safety related to major cardiac surgery, coronary bypass surgery, heart failure treatment and stroke care.
“I attribute that to a lot of teamwork. I attribute it to the organization taking a look at what we can be doing better and taking those things we may not be doing great in and putting an action plan together,” Stevens said.
“Every morning, we have a daily huddle about what went well the night before, what’s going to happen today and what we can do to fix the things that aren’t going well. What it’s created is a lot of communication with one another, as well as different departments talking to one another. We are also talking about the delivery of care.”
The hospital is also working with its clergy community board, led by Bishop Courtney Jones of Pleasant Grove Church in North St. Louis. On Saturday, April 8 from 10 a.m.-1 p.m., North County clergy and their congregations are invited to Christian Hospital’s Atrium to learn about the different services it offers. Physicians will speak and there will be information booths on hospital services and programs.
“This is the community’s hospital,” Stevens said, “and we are putting our best medicine forward.”
