This is National Women’s Health Week and I have asked one of our St. Luke’s physician leaders, Dr. Laura McGeorge, to be my guest blogger this week on some of the key health issues for women. St. Luke’s wants Idaho to have the healthiest women of any state. Better health for women means a more [...]
Two clinical improvement initiatives from St. Luke’s were recognized by Qualis Health, the well-known care management organization that oversees quality for the Medicare program in our region, at the state-wide Quality and Patient Safety Conference held in Boise on April 5. These two projects were selected from numerous submissions and were among four chosen for [...]
Since 1995, the first full week in April has been National Public Health Week, providing the American Public Health Association and other organizations the opportunity to bring attention to health improvement. I recently met with Elke Shaw-Tulloch, administrator for the Idaho Department of Health and Welfare’s Division of Public Health. We discussed the fact that [...]
While picking up a prescription recently, I had the opportunity to tour our St. Luke’s Boise pharmacy and talk to staff members who, I was delighted to discover, are incorporating our vision and strategy every day in all they do. I visited with Pharmacy Operations Manager Mike Griffiths and was so impressed with his clarity [...]
I am writing with an update on the investigation by the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) and the Idaho Attorney General’s Office. We learned late yesterday that the FTC and the AG have decided to file a complaint in federal court against St. Luke’s. This action is related to the lawsuit filed by Saint Alphonsus and [...]
TEAMwork works, and St. Luke’s Clinic Internal Medicine (SLIM) Parkcenter has proven just how powerful it can be. TEAMwork is St. Luke’s application of lean principles. It’s our management operating system. TEAMwork stands for timely, effective, accountable, measureable work. And it’s making its way through St. Luke’s Health System as we gain on our Triple [...]
We always learn a lot when we ask people to provide us with their input, rather than making assumptions about what they want, and there was so much to learn from my most recent poll, in which I was interested to know how people felt about the terms “patient,” “customer,” and “consumer.” Patient vs. customer [...]
It is with excitement and a great deal of pride that I share with you the news that St. Luke’s has been accepted into the Medicare Shared Savings Program (MSSP). Our participation as Idaho’s first and only MSSP participant was effective Jan. 1. For a long time, we have known, and I have been saying, that [...]
Dr. Greg Janos, executive medical director of St. Luke’s Children’s Hospital, imagined the future in the writing that follows. During our coffee chat at Shoreline last week, I promised to post his “Imagine” essay, which first appeared in our January ”News from St. Luke’s Children’s Hospital” publication. Imagine. Sometime in the hopefully not-so-distant future … A 2-year-old [...]
