Becker's Hospital Review

72 CMO / CARE DELIVERY Meritus Health taps Melissa McHugh Short as chief nursing officer By Cailey Gleeson H agerstown, Md.-based Meritus Medical Center appointed Melissa McHugh Short, RN, to serve as chief nursing officer, it shared in an email with Becker's Aug. 8. Her appointment is effective immediately. Dr. Short has nearly 20 years of experience in nursing and more than 15 years of experience in nursing leadership. She worked at Swedish Hospital and Healthcare System in Seattle for the past 11 years in numerous leadership roles, most recently serving as associate vice president of operations across two hospital campuses. "Melissa joins Meritus Medical Center's senior leadership team with a passion for patient care excellence and serving as a nursing leader in a community hospital and health system," said Carrie Adams, PharmD, chief operating officer of Meritus Medical Center. "Her leadership experience and values will advance Meritus' commitment to high reliability, continual readiness and nursing excellence, as well as capitalizing on Meritus Medical Center's 2030 Bold Goals." n Primary care providers need more than 26 hours a day to follow national care guidelines, study estimates By Erica Carbajal P rimary care providers don't have nearly enough time to provide guideline-recommended preventive, chronic disease and acute care, according to a new study. The study was led by researchers at the University of Chicago, Baltimore-based Johns Hopkins University and Imperial College London. Their findings, published July 1 in the Journal of General Internal Medicine, showed providing recommended care would take a primary care physician 26.7 hours per day to see an average number of patients. Researchers estimated it would take 14.1 hours per day to provide recommended preventive care, 7.2 hours per day for chronic disease care, 2.2 hours a day for acute care, and 3.2 hours per day for administrative work. "There is this sort of disconnect between the care we've been trained to give and the constraints of a clinic workday," Justin Porter, MD, lead study author and assistant professor of medicine at the University of Chicago, said in an Aug. 3 news release. "We have an ever-increasing set of guidelines, but clinic slots have not increased proportionately." The researchers conducted a simulation study on hypothetical panels of 2,500 patients using data from the U.S. 2017-18 National Health and Nutrition Examination survey. They calculated the time required to provide 2020 guideline-recommended preventive, chronic disease and acute care to the hypothetical patient panels. Researchers also found a team-based model — which involves nurses, physician assistants, counselors and others in the delivery of recommended care — reduced the time a physician needs to deliver care to 9.3 hours per day. Under this model, estimates suggest primary care physicians would need two hours per day for preventive care, 3.6 hours per day for chronic disease care, 1.1 hours per day for acute care, and 2.6 hours a day for documentation and inbox medicine. n Nurses sue AdventHealth over active shooter drill they thought was real By Cailey Gleeson T wo AdventHealth nurses at an emergency room in Ocala, Fla., are suing the hospital over a training session that included a simulated active shooter exercise that trainees were not informed was part of a drill, Fox 35 Orlando reported Aug. 5. Lauren Palazini and Dominique Tucker filed separate lawsuits against the hospital. e suits state they were attending a mandatory disaster preparedness and mass casualty training session when an unannounced active shooter situation occurred. A male employee who was carrying what appeared to be a semiautomatic weapon made a loud noise that sounded like a gunshot, burst into the training room and told everyone to get on the ground. One of the nurses called 911. Both allege they were not informed it was a drill until 10 minutes later. ey are seeking $30,000 each in damages. AdventHealth told Fox 35 Orlando in a statement that the lawsuit "specifically refers to a single incident in 2021, which was one segment of a larger comprehensive safety training for a group of nursing students. We have addressed this instance to ensure a standard process is followed consistently and continue to [work] with industry experts to make our training as effective as possible at protecting our teams and patients." n

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