Lexington Memorial Hospital 1989-1990 Annual Report

Success doesn’t just happen. Any organization—a business, a school, a church or a family—must work to achieve it.

At Lexington Memorial Hospital, we’ve secured our success by creating and managing the right mix of people and programs, technology, facilities and financial support to serve our community.

With these elements in place, we measure success by how well we provide the very best in personal, progressive health care to you and your family.

Thank you for your support of our community hospital.

John H. Frank, FACHE
President
Lexington Memorial Hospital

People and Programs

One important indicator of a hospital’s success is the degree and range of specialized expertise offered by its doctors, nurses, technicians and support staff.

At Lexington Memorial Hospital, several years of needs analysis, planning and aggressive recruiting have resulted in the right combination of doctors and hospital staff to serve our community. Lexington Memorial’s exceptionally positive work environment continues to attract qualified nurses and allied health care professionals to the staff. The hospital’s facility, size and pleasant, personalized atmosphere are additional drawing cards.

Through a variety of innovative programs, the hospital delivers personal, progressive health care services in the hospital, at home, in the work place and in the community.

In the Hospital

Volunteer Services. Approximately 90 adult volunteers contributed more than 23,350 hours to the hospital during the year, worth $234,916. Volunteers worked primarily in patient services, at the information desk, in the gift shop and in the Outpatient Center. Junior volunteers contributed an additional 1,025 hours of service.

Auxiliary Cheer Shop. Lexington Memorial’s Auxiliary Cheer Shop serves as a convenient place for visitors to buy gifts and flowers for patients. Profits from the gift shop’s operations last year were used to support the auxiliary’s many programs and projects.

Chaplain On Call. Ministers from churches throughout our community contributed nearly 8,500 hours of service during the year, providing patients and their families around-the-clock access to spiritual guidance and support in times of crisis.

At Home

Piedmont Home Care. Increasing demand for professional health care at home is definitely the trend for the future. To respond to this trend, Lexington Memorial applied for and was granted permission by the State of North Carolina to establish a home health care agency to serve Davidson, Davie, Guilford and Forsyth counties.

The agency, Piedmont Home Care, offers a full range of multidisciplinary health care services to help insure continuity of care from hospital to home. Like the hospital, Piedmont Home Care is operated as a not-for-profit corporation.

Home Care of Western Carolina. An ideal complement for Piedmont Home Care is the hospital’s agreement with North Carolina Baptist Hospital’s Home Care of Western Carolina, Inc., to offer durable medical equipment, such as hospital beds, bathroom accessories, respiratory equipment, wheelchairs, crutches, canes and walkers, as well as specialized health care supplies, for sale or rent through Medical Park Pharmacy.

In the Work Place

One of the best ways to serve many of our community’s health care consumers is through the work place. That’s why Lexington Memorial places such a high priority on programs to address employers’ needs.

Employee Wellness Programs and Health Screenings. Lexington Memorial helps area employers lower health care costs while improving the health and fitness of their employees through a variety of programs in the work place.

In addition to offering on-site blood pressure, cholesterol and pulmonary function screenings, the hospital offers low-cost mammograms to members of employee groups.

Lexington Memorial also offers a series of weight management classes to employers who wish to offer them as an employee benefit. Working with the American Cancer Society, the hospital sponsors smoking cessation classes for employee groups.

Finally, the hospital’s Speakers Bureau offers “Food for Thought” to provide brief health-related programs on-site for employees during their lunch hours.

“Health Matters.” In November 1989, Lexington Memorial published the first issue of “Health Matters,” a quarterly newsletter featuring hospital and health care news of interest to the area business community. Subscriptions are free on request.

The Health Care Connection. The hospital recently launched The Health Care Connection, a program allowing the employee and any family member covered by the employer’s medical insurance to save time with express registration and discharge from Lexington Memorial, receive a free copy of The Dispatch during the patient’s hospital stay, and receive discounts in the hospital gift shop and at Medical Park Pharmacy.

For employers eligible to participate, the program represents an opportunity to provide a valuable employee health benefit at no cost. Since, according to the North Carolina Database Commission, Lexington Memorial’s charges are about 8.5 to 25 percent lower, on average, than charges for the same procedures at other area hospitals, the program can also lower an employer’s total health care costs by encouraging employees to choose Lexington Memorial.

In the Community

Ultrafast®. Lexington Memorial now offers Ultrafast®, a medically supervised weight loss program to help people who are significantly overweight lose excess pounds and keep them off. So far, program participants have lost a total of 2,000 pounds.

The LMH Speakers Bureau. As a free community service, Lexington Memorial Hospital provides qualified speakers on health-care topics to area professional, civic, business and church groups. Meeting space for as many as 40 people is available at the hospital. Groups may simply use the meeting room, or they may arrange for a speaker and/or a hospital tour during their visit. Food service is available at a nominal charge.

Physician Referral Service. If you need a doctor, Lexington Memorial’s Physician’s Referral Service will tell you which doctors in our community are currently accepting new patients. There is no charge for this service. Call (704) 249-8307.

Jasper. With the help of a fuzzy blue stuffed animal named Jasper, our community’s second graders learn what to expect from a visit to the hospital. Last Fall, hospital employees and volunteers presented Jasper to approximately 1,500 children in 19 area schools. In the Spring, children were invited to tour the hospital. To inspire the artists among them, Lexington Memorial recently sponsored a poster contest in which school children submitted drawings of Jasper at the hospital.

The Jasper program and the poster contest won 1990 “Wallie Awards” from the Carolinas Hospital Public Relations and Marketing Society.

Companion Call Light. Hospital volunteers have installed more than 50 Companion Call Light units in area homes, enabling users, many of whom are elderly, to call for help in case of an emergency.

Buckle Up Babes. Lexington Memorial provides infant car seats for sale to new parents, with free seats available to parents who can’t afford to buy them.

Prescription for Laughter. Members of the medical staff and hospital employees joined colleagues at Thomasville’s Community General to present “Prescription for Laughter,” a benefit performance that raised $6,000 for the Davidson County Community College nursing program.

Technology and Facilities

To be successful today and tomorrow, a hospital must secure the most advanced technology possible and keep its facilities ready to accommodate changing demand for health care services.

Building for the Future

In an external study of its current and future facility requirements, Lexington Memorial has determined its volume of patients is comparable to that of a 160-bed facility. The hospital currently has 94 beds. Industry analysts expect demand for outpatient services to keep growing, especially in areas like physical therapy, laboratory services, radiology and outpatient surgery.

Expansion Plans. To respond to growing demand, the hospital plans to expand its facility over the next several years. During Phase One of the expansion, space is being added to the Physical Therapy and Laboratory departments, both of which have experienced as much as a 50% increase in outpatient utilization during the past two years. Future expansion phases will address longer-term needs, such as emergency services, critical care and other patient services.

LDR Rooms. Lexington Memorial recently completed renovations to create four new combined LDR rooms featuring carpeted floors, decorator colors and oak furniture. The hospital has also redecorated patients’ postpartum rooms in the Obstetrics Department to provide a more attractive, homelike atmosphere for parents and their newborns.

With these changes, our community’s new parents enjoy the perfect blend of progressive care and personal touch to make having a baby a safe, warm experience.

The Step-Down Unit. To provide an intermediate level of care between intensive care and the care received in the hospital’s two medical-surgical units, Lexington Memorial recently created a six-bed “step-down” unit. The unit will open soon.

The Outpatient Center. Lexington Memorial’s Outpatient Surgery and Diagnostic Center ended its third year of operations with a 24 percent increase in outpatient surgeries and other procedures this year over last year. Since opening in May 1987, the Outpatient Center has been one of the hospital’s most active departments, with a total of 67,991 outpatient visits during the past three fiscal years.

Advanced Diagnostic and Treatment Tools

CT Scanner. The hospital’s CT (computerized tomography) scanner works by passing numerous X-ray beams through the brain from various angles and at different levels, measuring their penetration and then integrating the data by computer to produce a composite, three-dimensional picture. From the composite, doctors can see individual “slices” of the brain at any level and from any direction.

Ultrasound Doppler. The hospital’s computerized “whole body” ultrasound doppler system transmits sound waves through body tissues, records the echoes as the sounds encounter objects within the body, and transforms the recordings into a photographic image.

Mammography Unit. Lexington Memorial’s mammography unit is used to detect breast cancer and other abnormalities in breast tissue as early as possible.

Echocardiograph. The hospital’s computerized echocardiograph allows for detailed recording and analysis of heart function.

Pulmonary Function Monitor. Lexington Memorial’s pulmonary function equipment provides the hospital’s respiratory therapists with a computerized analysis of how well a patient’s lungs function.

Intensive Care Cardiac Monitors. Each of the intensive care unit’s ten rooms is equipped with its own cardiac monitor, with video displays for each patient linked to all ten rooms in the unit’s nursing station. The equipment can also provide blood pressure and lung pressure readings, detect fluid overloads and deficiencies, and measure how much blood the heart is pumping.

Video for Laparoscopic Cholecystectomy and Endoscopy. Lexington Memorial’s doctors have access to advanced video equipment to monitor internal organs during surgeries and other procedures. Using the video equipment, surgeons recently performed the hospital’s first laparoscopic cholecystectomy, a procedure to remove the gall bladder that requires several small incisions rather than one large one, reducing pain and speeding recovery. Doctors also use the hospital’s video equipment for endoscopy procedures to diagnose and treat intestinal problems.

Finances

The Gifts of Healing. With a generous grant from The Duke Endowment to help underwrite start-up costs, The Lexington Memorial Hospital Foundation helped secure the hospital’s continuing financial strength and success through its fundraising efforts.

Gifts to the foundation are being used to purchase intensive care equipment for newborns and advanced diagnostic equipment, to provide scholarships for nursing and allied health care students, and to support community service projects, such as Companion Call Light and the infant car seat program.