Tanner Health System MyChart


  • Home
  • Keeping Health Care Close to Home

Keeping Health Care Close to Home

The field of health care has always been one of change. New discoveries, new advancements in medicine and new technologies and techniques to fight disease constantly send healthcare providers off in exciting new directions in delivering patient care.

In recent years, other factors have reshaped the industry. Medicare, Medicaid and private insurers have cut their reimbursement rates while legislation has required healthcare organizations to adopt and implement expensive new technologies like secure electronic medical records.

These changes have impacted operating margins for many providers already struggling with expenses and reimbursements. Throughout the nation and here in Georgia, healthcare organizations are responding to these changes by merging, consolidating or closing altogether.

At Tanner, we see opportunity in these changes. We’ve long been aware that the way healthcare providers are compensated for the care they provide must — and inevitably would — change, from defining success based on volume to defining success based on value. That is, it’s less about how many people are served, but how well.

For the third consecutive year — and the fourth time in five years — Tanner Health System has been named one of the 15 Top Health Systems in the nation by Truven Health Analytics, one of the country’s leading independent healthcare analytics companies.

Among the key findings in Truven’s study: winning health systems achieved higher survival rates and fewer errors at a lower overall treatment cost than non-winning health systems. Overall mortality rates were 14.7 percent lower for winning health systems versus non-winning peer group hospitals; complication rates were 15.1 percent lower and emergency department wait times were 12.3 percent lower.

The 15 Top Health System winners spent 5 percent less per care episode than non-winning peer systems, discharged patients from the hospital a half-day sooner than non-winners and attained average Hospital Consumer Assessment of Healthcare Providers and Systems (HCAHPS) scores that were 7 percentage points higher than non-winning peers.

That’s where health care is heading, and at Tanner, we’ve been committed to staying on the leading edge of that trend. We’ve worked to recruit not only physicians, but physicians who share our commitment to quality care. Now, we’re empowering those providers with state-of-the-art facilities and technology, so they can offer the best care possible to our neighbors here in the region.

We’re continuing to finalize plans for the new Tanner Health Pavilion, a state-of-the-art medical mall that will be built directly across from Tanner Medical Center/Carrollton. The facility will be tied into Dixie Street’s unique character, with an emphasis on greenspace and walking paths that will tie into the extensive Carrollton GreenBelt project, providing a safe thoroughfare for walkers and cyclists to downtown Carrollton.

In Bremen, construction has begun in earnest on the new surgical services center, offering three operating suites, a special procedures lab, an endoscopic suite, a new post-anesthesia recovery unit (PACU) and new short stay rooms for patients to prepare for and recover from procedures.

It’s the most recent improvement for the Bremen facility, which in recent months has also opened a new Tanner Café to serve staff and visitors, as well as improvements to common areas of the facility, including waiting areas.

And in Villa Rica, we’re continuing with plans to add about 64,000 square feet of clinical space to Tanner Medical Center/Villa Rica, with a new, much larger emergency department and an expanded and upgraded surgical services center that will allow the health system’s providers to perform more complex surgical procedures, including total joint replacements. The expansion also will enlarge the hospital’s maternity center and nursery, increasing capacity to care for new mothers from Carroll, Douglas and Paulding counties. That project will begin with the construction of a new power plant on the hospital campus to serve the expanding physical plant.

Also this year, Tanner established accredited chest pain centers in Carrollton and Villa Rica. When minutes matter most, the region’s local hospitals are at the top of the industry in delivering life-saving heart care to chest pain patients.

Tanner’s chest pain centers are accredited by the Society of Cardiovascular Patient Care (SCPC). The accreditation process was months in the planning, including vigorous on-site inspections, interviews with patient care teams and process refinement and evaluation to ensure that chest pain patients can receive the best care available. The accreditation is a product of the continuing partnership between local EMS agencies, the physicians and patient care teams in our emergency departments, our cardiologists and our catheterization lab staff — all of whom have been working together for years to deliver exceptional emergency heart care.

In addition, Tanner Cancer Care’s Roy Richards, Sr. Cancer Center earned continued radiation oncology accreditation this year from the American College of Radiology (ACR).

Radiation oncology — also known as radiation therapy or radiotherapy — is a standard treatment for cancer, prized for its ability to destroy the DNA in cancer cells, thereby destroying the cancer. Radiation oncologists may use radiation to eliminate cancer cells or to relieve a cancer patient’s pain. The Roy Richards, Sr. Cancer Center has been providing patients in west Georgia and east Alabama with the most sophisticated, advanced radiotherapy services available for more than 20 years. This continued accreditation acknowledges our ability to provide technically advanced radiation therapy techniques and excellent patient care, with a commitment to the utmost levels of quality and patient safety.

Work is underway to build the future of health care in Randolph County, with the new Tanner Medical Center/East Alabama in Wedowee. The new hospital is being built on the Tanner/East Alabama campus on South Main Street in Wedowee, where much of the infrastructure to support a modern, state-of-the-art hospital facility is already in place and where it will be convenient and accessible to residents throughout Randolph County.

The new hospital will be a more than 50,000-square-foot, three-story modern hospital facility, providing 24-hour emergency care, critical care support, inpatient and observation beds, a state-of-the-art surgical suite, advanced diagnostic imaging services and more. It will be the fifth hospital in the Tanner system, and is expected to open in the fall of 2017.

In the interest of delivering exceptional health care, we’re also taking steps to recruit and retain exceptional healthcare providers. The Atlanta Business Chronicle named the health system among its 2016 “Best Places to Work” in the “extra large employers” category, comprised of companies with 500 or more employees. There are staffing shortages throughout health care, from physicians to nurses to technologists. To continue providing exceptional care, we must not only create an environment where patients want to be, but where professionals want to be as well.

We’re also working to improve the health of our community. Tanner’s Get Healthy, Live Well is an ambitious grassroots network working to decrease health disparities, reduce obesity rates, prevent and manage chronic disease, eliminate tobacco use, increase physical activity and improve nutritious eating at schools, work sites, hospitals and clinics, early childcare centers, faith-based institutions, and the community at large. Key partnerships through schools, business and industry, and faith-based organizations — as well as innovative community-clinical linkages — have allowed Get Healthy, Live Well to reach community members across multiple sectors and have a broad impact on the region’s health.

Community hospitals have an obligation to improve the health of the people they serve. The region Tanner serves faces many of the same problems any southern suburb deals with: fried foods are popular, cancer is an issue and hypertension and diabetes rates are high. Like all hospitals, we realize we have to try and improve outcomes and the overall health of the community outside the walls of the hospital and outside of our clinics. We have to change the environment to which our patients return. Earlier this year, Get Healthy, Live Well was among only five such programs in the country to receive a prestigious 2016 NOVA Award from the American Hospital Association.

This growth and focus on quality care is essential to making sure Tanner remains a thriving, successful and locally based healthcare organization. These efforts to expand and provider better and broader levels of care to our community is how we’ll remain a strong, independent and financially viable destination for care. No one is more committed to ensuring the future of our region’s health better than those who live here today. We’re taking steps now to ensure that the best possible care is available close to home, and to make sure that Tanner will be there to care for the generations to come. I encourage you to keep up with our growth in services and staff through our website, at www.tanner.org.

Tanner Health System




0 Comment(s) so far | Skip to comment form



Name:
Email:
Address Line 1:
Address Line 2:
City:
State:
Zip:
Comments:
 

keyboard_arrow_up