Renovations, New Programs Aim to Streamline Access and Treatment
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Both of Kankakee’s award-winning hospitals are making care more pleasant for their patients.
Provena St. Mary’s just wrapped up a $2 million renovation that transformed white and sterile common areas, including the entrance, into more inviting spaces with soft lighting and earth tones.
“We wanted to make it more aesthetically appealing,” says Melissa Tanner, St. Mary’s marketing and public relations manager. “People are often very scared when they come into the hospital and we want them to feel as comfortable as possible.”
After reviewing emergency room statistics, St. Mary’s took aim at wait times and reduced the average wait from nearly four hours in June 2007 to less than three hours at the end of December 2007, Tanner says.
The hospital gave its Family Birthing Center a facelift, adding a free DVD for moms, a pampering parent basket and birthday parties for older siblings to make them feel special.
It spent $1.5 million on a new Picture Archiving and Communication System that allows doctors to access X-rays over computers, making diagnosis faster.
Riverside Medical Center has also made impressive strides toward improving patient care. Riverside has targeted the ailment that afflicts 80 percent of adults at least once and is the second leading cause of lost work and hospital stays – back problems. It has created a one-stop-shop Spine Center that gets patients into treatment, whether for therapy, pain management or surgery, more quickly and streamlines a process that too often is frustrating and confusing.
“We wanted to coordinate all of these services we already had and make it easier for the patient,” says Rebecca Lentz Schiltz, Riverside’s director of rehabilitation services.
Riverside and Provena St. Mary’s aren’t content to rest on their laurels. Still, the awards keep coming. In the 10th Annual HealthGrades Hospital Quality in America study, Riverside ranked first in Illinois for cardiac surgery, beating out bigger facilities in Chicago. The study looked at patient outcomes at 5,000 U.S. hospitals for three years.
In March 2008, Thomson Healthcare named Riverside one of the country’s 100 Top Hospitals for 2007, the first time the hospital received this key industry distinction.
In April 2008, HealthGrades cited both Provena St. Mary’s Hospital and Riverside as Distinguished Hospitals for Patient Safety, placing them in the top 5 percent in the nation for patient safety.
Story by Pamela Coyle
