Employee News

Talk about a population explosion. The East Valley, part of the metropolitan Phoenix area, is one of the fastest growing places in the country. In the next five years, the population is expected to increase over 15 percent to 1.8 million residents. All over the area, new homes, new businesses, and new schools are filling the desert landscape. And now, on a 50-acre parcel of land in one of the fastest growing sections, IASIS has plans for a brand new hospital.

“We’re taking a futuristic approach in designing this hospital with the most modern medical technology that will be available—not today, but in 2007, when the hospital is scheduled to open,” said Scott Winslow, President of the Arizona Market. “The response from the medical community has been overwhelming and very positive. We’re pleased to have so much support for this project.”

Plans for the new hospital call for a strong cardiology program, including a cath lab, open-heart and robotic surgery, and cardiac rehab. The hospital will provide a full array of healthcare services, from OB to neurology, to meet the diverse needs of the people who call the East Valley home, including young families, baby boomers, and retired people.

The new hospital is projected to cost over $125 million to build. Initial plans include two medical office buildings that connect to the hospital on two floors, making it convenient for physicians to visit their patients. The technology will be state-of-the-art, including digital operating rooms, sophisticated diagnostic equipment, and an electronic medical record system.

To take advantage of the dramatic desert scenery, plans for the hospital include a two-story atrium lobby, a cafeteria on the second floor that overlooks the Superstition Mountains, and lots of windows. All of the patient rooms will be private. And, throughout the hospital, the interior finishes will make the hospital inviting to patients and their visitors.

“Nobody ever wants to go to the hospital, but we’re going to build this one so that people who need hospital services can find excellent medical care in a beautiful, comfortable environment,” said Winslow. “The plans are excellent. The hospital will be very impressive, and we have a lot to look forward to.”

Satisfaction Scores

IASIS Hospitals Partner
with Press Ganey

When it comes to finding out what patients really think about a hospital, and how to improve patient satisfaction, more than 30 percent of the hospitals in the U.S. use Press Ganey surveys. At the beginning of the year, IASIS hospitals switched their patient satisfaction surveys to Press Ganey, too, and each IASIS hospital now has four different patient satisfaction surveys — one each for Inpatients, Outpatient Services, Ambulatory Surgery, and Emergency Visits.

Patients are mailed surveys within a couple of days of discharge, and asked to rate areas of the hospital on a scale of 1 to 5, with 5 being the highest score. In a review of over two million patient surveys, Press Ganey found hospitals that focus on performing well in the following areas can make a big difference in a patient’s overall satisfaction:

•	The attention nurses give to a patient’s special or personal needs
•	How well patients are kept informed
•	How well the hospital staff works together to care for patients
•	Concern shown for a patient’s privacy
•	The hospital’s response to concerns or complaints during a patient’s stay
•	The hospital staff’s attitude toward visitors
•	Overall cheerfulness of the hospital

In the coming weeks, each hospital will begin receiving survey results, with information about how the hospital can improve patient satisfaction. Ask your supervisor how your area of the hospital is performing, and make it your goal to get HIGH 5’s — the best scores possible!

IASIS employee satisfaction scores were the highest at Odessa Regional Medical Center, above. Physicians at Mid-Jefferson, below left, and Memorial Hospital, below right, tied for having the top physician satisfaction scroe of all IASIS facilities.

Satisfaction Stars

IASIS regularly surveys physicians and employees to find out what they think about where they work. The results of the most recent satisfaction surveys showed the following hospitals as top scorers. Congratulations to the top scoring hospitals in each category:

Top Physician Satisfaction Scores
Memorial and Mid-Jefferson (tie)
Palms of Pasadena and Odessa Regional (tie)

Top Employee Satisfaction Scores
Odessa Regional
Mid-Jefferson
Southwest General

IASIS is making a $40 million
commitment to add advanced clinical
technology to all of its hospitals.

High-Tech Healthcare
Advanced clinical technology increases efficiency, patient safety

Forget paper charts—staff at North Vista Hospital can now access a patient’s records simultaneously, remotely and in real time thanks to new advanced clinical technology that will eventually be rolled out in all IASIS hospitals.

Mobile computers—called Traveling Electronic Documentation units, or TEDs—are rolled into patients’ rooms to keep records updated, and those records can be accessed by all members of a patient’s healthcare team—whether it’s a tech in radiology, a nurse at the nurse’s station, or a doctor across the street in his office.

“It connects all of us to the patient simultaneously,” says Brenda Greer, North Vista’s med/surg nurse manager. “There’s no more fighting over one medical record or guessing who has the chart.”

The electronic documentation system can also pull important information directly from medical devices such as ventilators and cardiac monitors, adding that information to the patient’s record.

Besides less paperwork, nurses benefit from an electronically generated to-do list that reminds them to administer certain medications and other tasks.

CEO Jim McKinney poses with a giant teddy bear, one of the many bears that decorated North Vista Hospital to mark the launch of the TED (Traveling Electronic Documentation) system at the North Las Vegas hospital.

To kick off the launch of the advanced clinical system in December, North Vista staff decorated all areas of the hospital with teddy bears, including a giant bear that employees entered a drawing to win.

To further increase patient safety, the hospital launched a medication bar code system. Nurses now scan a patient’s ID bracelet, and the medication they are administering, matching the bar codes to ensure it is the right drug, in the right dose, at the right time, to the right patient.

IASIS has made a $40 million commitment to add advanced clinical technology to all of its hospitals in the coming years.

“We’re very proud of the steps we’re taking to become a high-tech hospital with the tools physicians and nurses need to deliver excellent healthcare,” says Jim McKinney, North Vista’s interim CEO. “We’re combining this technology with a caring, compassionate approach to how we treat our patients. That’s good for everyone.”