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Congratulations to McKay-Dee Hospital in Ogden, Utah for being recognized on Becker's Healthcare's "Great hospitals in America" list for 2024! 🎉 The hospitals on this list are widely recognized for their clinical excellence, commitment to patient safety, innovative initiatives, research efforts, education and high levels of patient satisfaction. Esteemed ranking and award organizations, including U.S. News & World Report, Healthgrades, CMS and The Leapfrog Group, have acknowledged these hospitals for their leadership in the healthcare industry and their outstanding performance across various specialties.
Isaac Johnson had never had what he considers a “real” job before signing on for an internship at Logan Regional Hospital in Logan, Utah this summer. Growing up in an athletic family, his responsibility from an early age was to get better and better at basketball and to earn a college scholarship. Not long after his magical run ended with a loss to No. 1 seed Purdue and national player of the year Zach Edey, Isaac was at Chipotle in Logan when he bumped into his dentist, who happened to be eating with Logan Regional Hospital president Brandon McBride. Brandon said that after meeting with Isaac to discuss his career goals, he arranged for Isaac to intern with the administrative team at Logan Regional Hospital. “He’s been a great addition to our admin council, and I hope he’s learning a lot from his time with us,” Brandon said. “Isaac is very bright, engaged and has an incredible future ahead of him as a healthcare leader. I’m excited to watch him grow personally and professionally and proud to have the opportunity to support his development at this stage of his learning.” Isaac is considering owning and managing assisted living facilities and possibly running a “health shopping mall” offering various care options. But all of that will have to wait until he follows through on his first job and pursues a career as a professional basketball player.
When Margaret “Beth” Sweeney, DO, was a little girl, she already knew what she wanted to do with her life. She wanted to be an actor. Her mother was an opera singer, and her father was a writer. She grew up in Manhattan, New York, home to Broadway. Surrounded by the arts, her performance course was arguably set in stone. But Dr. Sweeney’s acting career turned out to be the dress rehearsal for the rest of her life. Despite studying at multiple schools and moving to California, her professional work transitioned multiple times, from acting to personal training to competitive bodybuilding to massage therapy before becoming a primary care physician at age 50. Dr. Sweeney currently serves patients at the Henderson Senior Primary Clinic in southern Nevada. Although her journey into healthcare came later compared to others, she took the lessons she learned along the way to find fulfillment. As Dr. Sweeney's story shows, careers rarely follow a straight line, and are often full of surprises. The five elements of modern career planning are: know yourself, seek feedback, understand your environment, create a vision, and make a plan.
Becker's Healthcare recently asked C-suite executives from hospitals and health systems across the U.S. to share the biggest misconception about healthcare this year. Hear from our very own JP Valin, MD, chief clinical officer, on his thoughts on the misconception around the use of artificial intelligence in healthcare as well as what other healthcare executives from across the country had to say in the Becker's story below.
We are proud to have 10 Intermountain Health hospitals receive 5-star ratings from the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) in their 2024 Overall Hospital Quality Star Ratings released on July 31! The organization annually assigns star ratings to eligible U.S. hospitals based on 46 hospital quality measures, which are divided into five quality categories: safety of care, mortality, patient experience, readmission rates, and timely and effective care. Only 381 hospitals received a 5-star rating.
Saint Joseph Hospital in Denver, Colorado recently began performing fiberoptic endoscopic evaluation of swallowing, or FEES, assessments on babies in the NICU. FEES helps determine if babies are having difficulty swallowing and if a premature infant is experiencing difficulties during feeding due to aspiration. FEES is performed by a speech therapist and an occupational therapist who insert a small, flexible endoscope into the baby’s nose and down the back of the throat so they can view the anatomy directly through a camera as the baby feeds and swallows. This procedure allows the therapists to visualize aspiration, penetration and uncoordinated swallowing of liquids and determine what adaptations are safe and efficient. Before launching FEES, NICU babies were sent to Radiology for a videofluoroscopic swallowing study, or VFSS. “One of the benefits of FEES is that it can reduce the baby’s length of stay in the NICU,” said Isabella Fanucci, speech therapist. “By identifying the issue sooner, there are multiple methods we can implement to help the baby improve faster like adjusting the nipple flow rate on a bottle or adding thickeners to their formula or breast milk.”
June 27th was already a hectic day at Sevier Valley Hospital in Richfield, Utah, with an at-capacity floor and ED, before clinical operations manager Bree Bastian received a call from her daughter's church youth leader. “The leader was distraught," Bree said. "She said my daughter was OK, but that a terrible thing had just happened, where their youth group was struck by lightning while on a hike.” Different reports were coming in, some saying up to 50 people would need to be seen. The strike occurred an hour from Sevier Valley Hospital, and EMS was coming. Sevier Valley was ready. The Sevier Valley team evaluated 16 patients following the lightning strike, and all were treated and released. As one could imagine, the youth on the trip were scared; their leaders, parents, and loved ones were scared. “But there is such a good feeling when you come to Sevier Valley,” said Bree. “What I know, and what our entire community knows, is you are going to be cared for just like it was your own family. We are there for each other. It’s a tight-knit community.”
Intermountain Primary Children’s Hospital and the University of Utah Health Department of Pediatrics are upgrading and expanding whole genome sequencing to more kids throughout the Intermountain West, thanks to a $9 million infusion to the Intermountain Primary Children’s Center for Personalized Medicine. The infusion, the largest in the center’s history, will be used to create “Primary Children’s Gene Kids,” a three-year, major pediatric genomics initiative to help children with genetic conditions. Primary Children’s Gene Kids is made possible by a $4.5 million grant from The Warren Alpert Foundation, which was matched by generous philanthropic donations to our Primary Promise campaign to create the nation’s model health system for children. “With Gene Kids, we will strive to reach every child and family in need, regardless of their location, through research, discovery, and innovative therapies that lead to better outcomes,” said Dustin Lipson, president of Intermountain Primary Children’s Hospital. “We are grateful for the support from The Warren Alpert Foundation and other generous community members who are helping us take Personalized Medicine to the next level, inspire hope, and advance science to help children in the years to come.”
Since its introduction, hundreds of caregivers have been making use of the Intermountain Health mentorship program. Mentoring is a benefit for all Intermountain caregivers from day one and can help anyone at any stage and any level of their career achieve their goals and feel supported in their growth. Mentorship is an intentional, developmental relationship in which a mentor with a high level of knowledge and experience supports the development and growth of a mentee seeking those competencies. For Aida Penunuri, social worker at Select Health, she is using Intermountain’s mentorship program to set a track for the next steps in her career. “I’ve always been a person who wants to learn and try new things,” Aida said. “The mentorship program has helped me navigate obstacles in my way and continue to challenge myself.” “Mentorship is for everyone,” said Rachel Jost, talent and career development consultant at Intermountain and Aida's mentor. “There is so much value from both being mentored and serving as a mentor. The human connection, relationship, and being exposed to different thoughts, ideas, experiences, and resources has a way of opening doors for people. We really want people taking advantage of this great resource.”
The patient wasn’t yet having swallow difficulties when they were referred to speech-language pathologist Jess O’Neil, CCC-SLP. Because of their course of radiation and chemotherapy, though, it was likely they would. “One of our best tools is the oral mechanism exam, where you essentially have people stick out their tongue, move it side to side and pucker their lips, just to see if there’s any obvious weakness that could be contributing to dysphasia,” says Jess. “Honestly, this patient was swallowing completely normal, so this was just part of my routine. I was not expecting to see anything out of the ordinary.” But when the patient stuck out their tongue, it pointed toward the left. Jess knew that a tongue deviation like that could indicate an irregularity with the hypoglossal nerve, one of the cranial nerves that controls the tongue. She carefully documented the finding in her notes and asked the patient to mention it to their radiation oncologist, Ari Ballonoff, MD. Dr. Ballonoff reviewed the patient’s previous imaging and ordered new images for comparison. As it turned out, the patient had developed brain metastases – which, without Jess’s workup, would most likely not have been discovered. “We work as a team to make sure we are looking at all options,” says Dr. Ballonoff. “In this case, Jess made a great catch that led to a new diagnosis and resulted in better care for this patient.”
