CMO Message: December 2024

Thank you for your work on Length of Stay (LOS). While I am closely watching November data, it is trending favorably, with LOS at St. Peter of 5.9 days for November (which if it holds, will be the lowest month on record for 2024, a value we haven’t seen at St. Peter since February 2021!) and at Providence Centralia 4.4 days for November (increased slightly from October at 4.3 days). ALOS for December is trending high only 9 days in (8.5 days for St. Peter and 5.5 days for Centralia), likely due to some very long length of stay patients who have discharged this month. Kudos for your work to date, let’s work together to close out the year strong!

LOS Areas of Focus to close 2024 and enter 2025! 

I am excited to share more information on a few areas of focus that you might notice as we close out the year and enter 2025 as far as our LOS work.

• Early Progressive Mobility – We are excited to relaunch this program focused on building a culture of mobility. We are engaging all our care team partners including nursing, rehab and even our provider teams to be sure patients are moving! You can help us by asking about your patient’s mobility and by walking with them when possible (maybe walking rounds)! Look for more information soon in an upcoming newsletter!
• Long Length of Stay – On any given day, we can have more than 100 patients with a greater than nine day length of stay, and recently had almost 30 patients with a 30 day or longer length of stay! We know that the longer patients stay, the more likely they are to become deconditioned and to be at risk for hospital acquired injuries. Many of the longest length of stay patients have complex discharge situations (citizenship, guardianship, complex medical course, etc.); we would like to be sure to identify patients that may need additional help navigating these complexities as early as possible in their hospitalization. In partnership with our Care Management teams, we are identifying patients who are off course, so that we can work together to get patients back on track where appropriate.

Thank you for your help conserving during our ongoing IV fluid shortage!

We have added all delayed and rescheduled surgeries back into the schedule based on patient preference. We are conducting all surgeries without restriction currently, but some fluids (Lactated Ringers and 3L bags) are still not back to full production or allocation from Baxter. Please continue conservation efforts, particularly for LR and 3L bags. I hope to have a positive update later in the month as to when we can resume business as usual with fluids … but we aren’t there quite yet. 

• For latest updates pertinent to our area: South Puget Sound IV Fluid Sharepoint (only available to internal users): South Puget Sound — Baxter IV, irrigation and dialysis shortage updates
• Please follow the Baxter news blog for additional information on Baxter’s operations.