Quality Business Model: Looking Back and Ahead
The history of Hospitalists of Northern Michigan covers less than two decades, but in that short time, we have made our mark on the medical map of this region and have established a successful model for other hospitalist groups around the country.
Our story began when the first hospitalists were employed at Munson Medical Center (MMC) on May 1, 1993. These hospitalist pioneers did internal medicine and family practice admissions at night, carried out consulting roles for inpatients, and attended cardiac arrests and other emergencies.
By 2001 the service included 12 providers, and in September of that year, we left Munson’s employment and established a private practice under our original name, Hospitalists of Northwest Michigan. Our practice has grown steadily since those early years. With a stable staff made up of top-notch providers, we have created a program that provides the best possible care for our patients and improves the quality of life for the local doctors. This allows the local community to attract and retain excellent primary care providers as well as specialists from nearly every branch of medicine and surgery. We believe that good communication with inpatient and outpatient providers, as well as with patients and their families, is a cornerstone for the high level of care we provide.
In December 2008, Hospitalists of Northwest Michigan assumed management of the hospitalist program at Mercy Hospital Cadillac, with Michael Salata, MD, as the program’s clinical director. In April 2009, our pediatric program opened at Munson Medical Center, under the direction of Jacques Burgess, MD, clinical director. In August 2009, a management agreement was reached with Alpena Regional Medical Center.
In order to better reflect our growing partnerships across all of Northern Michigan, Hospitalists of Northwest Michigan was renamed Hospitalists of Northern Michigan in 2009.
In 2010, Hospitalists of Northern Michigan (HNM) began working with War Memorial Hospital in Sault Ste. Marie, Michigan to launch a hospitalist program in their community. In 2011, HNM was invited to assume management of Dickinson County Healthcare System's (DCHS) hospitalist program. The opportunity to live and work in Michigan's beautiful upper peninsula has proven to be an irresistible attraction for a number of HNM's providers. They have been made to feel right at home in the Iron Mountain area since they began staffing DCHS in June of 2011.
In keeping with HNM's long held belief that hospitals and providers need to collaboratively provide high quality, effective and efficient healthcare, HNM was the first physician group to become a member of the Michigan Health and Hospital Association (MHA) in 2011.
Through the years, we have worked proactively with all of the hospitals we serve to manage change for the better. Our thirst for innovation and improvement is insatiable. We were early adopters of non-physician providers (NPPs), freedom of scheduling, creating a fellowship program for hospital medicine, using outpatient doctors in a contingent role, developing a pre-op assessment center, co-managing surgical cases, and establishing a mutually beneficial collaborative relationship with sub-specialists. Spanning four healthcare systems has allowed us to adopt the best practices of each and to positively influence the drive for quality throughout the region.
We are recognized as a group of quality leaders, having played crucial roles in many hospital initiatives at Munson Medical Center. We have been drivers, innovators and developers of an electronic medical record, the establishment of the Stroke Unit and the Medical Response Team (MRT), medication reconciliation, protocols for sepsis, deep vein thrombosis prevention, insulin use, and numerous quality enhancements and standardization efforts for patient care processes. Studies have shown that efforts like these lead to higher patient satisfaction, shorter lengths of stay, lower costs and improved quality. At Mercy Hospital Cadillac, HNM has led the Computerized Provider Order Entry effort, and in Cadillac and at Alpena Regional Medical Center we have worked with the staff and administration to improve a myriad of processes to optimize care, ensure safety and promote quality.