St. Tammany Health System President and CEO Joan Coffman recently visited The Lake 94.7-FM studios in Covington to chat with host Charles Dowdy about the myriad happenings at St. Tammany Health System, from the acquisition of new buildings to the start of new programs to the idea of promoting the area as a healthcare destination.
Listen in on their conversation in the embedded audio player below. You can also scroll down for a full transcript, edited lightly for length and readability.
Charles Dowdy: We’ve got our friends from St. Tammany Health System here. Tim!
Tim San Fillippo: Good morning, Charles. How are you doing today?
Charles: I am doing fine. Joan Coffman is here as well. She’s the executive chief everything.
Tim: President and CEO of St. Tammany Health System.
Charles: Thank you. There you go.
Joan Coffman: Chief cook and bottle washer.
Charles: No, I would like to get it right, but it has been a hectic morning. So, how are you?
Joan: I am doing well. Thank you so much.
Charles: Good. All right, let’s talk about the business stuff that does tie up a lot of your life right now. Let’s get into St. Tammany Health System. Where do you want to start if we are going to talk about what you guys are up to?
Joan: Well, Charles, as you know I always like to give a big shout-out to my team because they do extraordinary work. Right now, this week we are celebrating both Nurses Week as well as Hospital Week. With lots of festivities, sort of a circus theme. We met with the night shift last night. We all came in and celebrated those that work on the night shift. You know, we don’t often see them. And then today we will be doing the same thing with the day shift. Just a lot of fun. Serving them lunch, celebrating with them and celebrating them.
Charles: And that has got to mean a lot in the sense that you and your team, going in and celebrating them. As far as morale goes alone, it shows what’s important.
Joan: Yes, we all enjoy it. We get a kick out of it. That they get. You know, it is appreciated by all of them.
Charles: Yeah, I worked the night shift years ago at a snooker club in London. I am not going to go very far down that path, but that is tough work.
Joan: It is. It is.
Charles: Your body does not want to do that.
Joan: One of my sisters is a nurse and she worked nights for a long time. I mean, it us just different. You have to give them a lot of credit for the stamina.
Charles: Yeah, no doubt. What else is on your mind today?
Joan: Well, speaking of the team, we could not do it without them. We continue to have a number of accolades bestowed upon St. Tammany Health System. One that I wanted to mention this morning is that we have been recognized by Leapfrog with another grade A safety score for the 13th consecutive rating period. Very proud of the team because this is performance excellence over time and really focuses on zero harm for our patients. I do want to mention, because I think the world of our team, that we are the only hospital or health system in the state of Louisiana to be recognized 13 consecutive reporting periods.
Charles: Wow! If you don’t mind, I would like to talk just a little about the physical structure. I know the Cancer Center thing seems to be rocking and rolling there. I know there are some events happening there. Anything else as far as developing your footprint in terms of what is happening?
Joan: Great question. We continue to grow as our community grows, trying to stay ahead of that. We are celebrating one year, believe it or not, in the new South Tower. It is hard to believe it has already been a year, but, really, we have appreciated the additional space and capacity for critical care as well as medical-surgical space. We most recently opened up two new operating suites, one of which is a hybrid room, high level of technology, really does a lot of our cardiovascular procedures.
We do have plans to break ground on an ambulatory surgery center this summer, so we definitely need the additional capacity for operating rooms. We will have 12 rooms over there for operating suites. We will have 15 beds that can manage patients post-procedure, overnight if needed. We can go up to 20 beds if needed, so we have cushion built into that capacity.
And then we also just purchased in December – very late in December – two new buildings. One is the Administrative Support Building on Ashland Way here in Covington. The other is a warehouse. We were just at capacity with needs for storage, so we were very fortunate, right after Hurricane Ida, to identify these two buildings that we could pick up and closed on those at the end of the year.
Charles: Sounds busy. You are not a medical doctor, correct?
Joan: I am not.
Charles: Yeah, Tim’s not a medical doctor. I am not a medical doctor. I am amazed when he comes in here and talks some of the stuff as far as what you guys are doing. You have got to, I guess, have a little bit of everything in terms of what is happening in your hospital.
Joan: Yes. I am an X-ray tech by background so I have like this tiny ounce of clinical competence. I don’t tell that to many people because then the expectations go up. I rely a lot on the team and certainly have learned a lot over the years. I try and be aware but am certainly not a subject matter expert.
Charles: I would assume things are kind of getting back to normal in terms of coming out of this (COVID) situation. You and I have mentioned this before, and I have mentioned it with other doctors that work at your hospital: Are people coming back out, in terms of going back for their screenings? Starting to get their routine medical care back in place?
Joan: They are, and even for our team, we are treating the pandemic now as endemic, just as a natural part of the population that we are serving. We have learned a lot throughout the pandemic and certainly know how to manage through it today. Supplies are flowing as they should, so we don’t have any concerns or hiccups there. Today we have three COVID-positive inpatients. It has been staying around one to three for many, many months now. Really grateful to the community for being so proactive and managing this. But patients are very much going back to seek care and being proactive. I want to give a big shout-out to the community at this point and thank them for their continued support of our healthcare heroes but also for being proactive with their healthcare needs. Wellness, prevention, early screenings are so important.
Charles: Every month has something attached to it these days, in and out of the medical world. But you guys have something real important for the month of May, and I want you to talk about that if you don’t mind.
Joan: Yep, so May, for those who don’t know, is Mental Health Awareness Month. For us at St. Tammany Health System, we have always tried to meet the needs of the community wherever possible. So, for example we have geriatric certification for our emergency rooms. We have autism certification throughout the health system. In caring for the population with respect to mental health, I am very proud of our emergency room teams because they sought out and were recognized by the American College of Emergency Room Physicians for their opioid reduction.
One of the things that they had noticed, and you probably are familiar, too, Charles, is that St. Tammany Parish had an increased rate of overdose deaths. So, as they thought about that and really wanted to make an impact, they looked at how they were treating patients in the emergency room, particularly those who already may have some sort of an opioid risk. And they wanted to reduce the number of opioid treatments and suggested alternative treatments. What that resulted in was about a 30% reduction in the number of treatments of opioids. So we are very, very proud of the team for thinking about the impact that we do have on our population, doing what we can to mitigate that.
Charles: That is very impressive. Before we run out of time, you were involved with an event that was out at Northshore Technical, I believe.
Joan: I was.
Charles: Tell us what that was, if you don’t mind.
Joan: That is exciting I think for the entire parish and, quite honestly, a tri-parish region: St Tammany Parish, Washington Parish, Tangipahoa. Healthcare professionals from those three parishes really came together under the leadership of St. Tammany Corporation, along with Dr. Wainwright from the technical college and Melissa Kirsch from Tri Parish Works.
So, why did we come together? It was important that we work in partnership with one another to address the workforce shortages that we are all experiencing but also to create awareness of our region as a destination for care, world-class care. So, people will ask: What does that mean really? It is really about making sure we are maintaining that high level of quality, improved outcomes, lowering the cost of care but also creating an ecosystem of support services, businesses, industries that can help provide us with what we need to care for our patients in the community.
Charles: Alright, we are going to wrap up with Tim talking about providing care. You guys have an event coming up.
Tim: Next Wednesday, on May 18, we are having a nursing open house and hiring event on our main campus. That is from 4:30 to 7:00. For more information you can reach out to Amy at (985) 898-4507 or check out on the website at sttammany.health/nursingcareers.
Charles: Perfect. Alright we are out of time. Joan, we are always glad to have you. Come back anytime.
Joan: Thanks, Charles.