HJNO Nov/Dec 2020

Q&A 18 NOV / DEC 2020 I  HEALTHCARE JOURNAL OF NEW ORLEANS   system that are making a radical difference in health outcomes for our patients are TAVR and Mako. We are the first Northshore hos- pital with transcatheter aortic valve replace- ment or TAVR, which is less invasive than open heart surgery and only requires small incisions similar to angioplasty. Our leading TAVR cardiologist, Dr. Hamid Salam, typically performs the entire procedure in an hour or two, and his patients can go home in a day. We also expanded our long-established robotics capabilities with purchase of a Stryker Mako System to perform total knee and total hip replacements. By adding Mako to our robotics inventory, St. Tammany is changing the way orthopedic surgeries are performed across the joint replacement ser- vice line. We’re providing each patient with a far more precise surgery plan based on our specialists’ decades of experience coupled with Mako’s imagery. How are the partnerships with Och- sner and Mary Bird Perkins going? We are grateful for the collaborations we have forged over many years with local community physicians, fellow heath systems and others whosemissions align with ours to improve the health and lives of our commu- nity residents. You mention two of our most successful collaborations, the Ochsner part- nership and St. Tammany Cancer Center, in which St. Tammany Health System, Ochsner and Mary Bird Perkins partner together. Collectively, we have grown by 40 percent over the last five years the number of patients whose cancers were treated in our center and close to home for themselves and their fami- lies. That great success comes with new chal- lenges, and the present location of St. Tam- many Cancer Center, 1203 South Tyler St., has grown out of its current location despite a renovation and expansion in 2018. Late last year, we embarked on a new state-of-the- art center on the corner of Ochsner Boule- vard and Tyler Street onOchsner’s Covington campus. We continue to talk with Mary Bird and to engage our local oncologists, gastro- enterologists, surgeons and other specialists to ensure this comprehensive new asset for says we are the heartbeat of our community, caring for our patients and their families with excellence, compassion and teamwork. Our vision is to strengthen the health of our com- munity with compassion, innovation and partnership, and our values are teamwork, trust, compassion, quality and innovation. When you think about infrastructure and operations, beyond that huge change in how we present ourselves to the world, we are also growing by leaps and bounds. We’re nearly finished with a four-story $56 million addi- tion to the main hospital building, increas- ing our critical care, neonatal and medical/ surgical capacity. In partnership with Och- sner Health, we are developing a larger, more comprehensive cancer center down the street from the current location tomeet the needs of our expanding services, and we are about to open the Covington Clinic which will house St. Tammany Pediatrics, STHS PediatricTher- apy, the Parenting Center and our Express Care Clinic. Can you tell us if STHS is using the UroNav system to help detect possible cancer earlier? UroNav is one example of our commit- ment to create the destination center for care as well as our investments in TAVR, Mako and even the decadeslong commitment we have in leading surgical robotics with our da Vinci collection. UroNav is fascinating, because it makes diagnosing and treating prostate cancer so much more accurate than traditional meth- ods urologists were using before this MRI- guidance became available. It fuses magnetic resonance and ultrasound images that our urologists use to quickly visualize and evalu- ate suspicious lesions. Other than skin cancer, prostate cancer is the most common form of cancer inAmericanmen and their second leading cause of death. In fact, Washington Parish has the highest mortality rates of pros- tate cancer in the state, especially for Black males. These are health measures we see as our responsibility to impact, and investments like UroNav are part of that effort. Two more innovations at our health With the pressure of the pandemic and recent hurricanes, have there been staffing issues, and have there been staffing changes due to the pandemic? We are grateful to have skilled team members who feel called to this work. We are committed to upholding and support- ing our brave colleagues on the front lines of this fight, and we have been fully staffed throughout the pandemic and during recent weather threats. We also introduced some innovative staff- ing plans that enabled us to minimize risk related to COVID exposure, all while bal- ancing our staff’s needs for activation and decompression times.This helps ensure resil- ience at this unprecedented, stressful time in all our lives and careers. We have also made special efforts to rec- ognize our colleagues throughout these chal- lenging times, and it has helped us maintain a loyal and committed workforce. We continue to recruit new teammembers as we grow, so we encourage everyone who feels called to a life in healthcare to visit the careers section of STPH.org . Can you explain in greater detail how your infrastructure has changed in the past year as an operational hospital and health system? Leading this issue is corporate identity, encompassing our newname, logo and defin- ing statements. Digging deeper, our facilities help to define us as a system. Our new name and logo, St. Tammany Health System, launched Dec. 1, 2019, the 65th anniversary of our 1954 opening, to better convey our depth and breadth of ser- vices throughout our district. Our new logo retains interlocking hearts to convey our long history of compassion in the commu- nity, but the new lines further evoke cardio- vascular health, mother-baby bonding and family health. The updated mission, vision and values are designed to remain true to the principles the service district was founded upon and yet speak inmore current language. Our mission