JAPANESE DELEGATION TOURS HOSPITAL

A delegation of Japanese health care experts toured St. Francis Medical Center Friday to learn more about the local hospital's venture into patient-focused care.

Three physicians and a member of the board of directors from St. Mary's Hospital in Kurume, Japan, talked with nurses, doctors and administrators about implementation of the new philosophy in patient care.

"The concept called patient-focused care we think is a necessary concept for the Japanese medical environment" as well as the American, said Tadashi Saegusa, a member of the board of directors from St.. Mary's Hospital.

Just as re-engineering is taking place in industry, he said, hospitals are also being "re-engineered" to make better use of personnel and resources and to improve patient care.

Patient-focused care is "much more advanced" in the United States, he said. "We wanted to learn from the hospitals who are more advanced than we are" in the area of patient-focused care, he said.

Under patient-focused care, interdisciplinary teams provide care for each patient. Care plans are drawn up for each patient and coordinated by a registered nurse.

In a traditional care setting, patients are moved to the services, said Cheryl Mothes, surgery center leader and one of the organizers of Friday's tour.

"Now services come to the patient," she said. "For example, instead of having a respiratory therapy department in the basement, the therapist is up with the rest of the team."

St.. Mary's Hospital has already implemented patient-focused care in its outpatient department, Saegusa said, "which is a very large business in the Japanese hospital."

Delegates are now studying how patient-focused care can be implemented for inpatient services, he said.

The delegation, which also includes Kageshige Todo, a physician and acting president of St.. Mary's, and physicians Taketo Tsutsui and Jun Takamatsu, recently visited a hospital in Detroit. It also will tour hospitals in Los Angeles and Long Beach, Calif., before returning to Japan.

St. Mary's probably would be the first hospital in Japan to use the system of patient-focused care. "They're over here to look at the concept and to look at what we've experienced as we've been going through the design and the implementation of the program," said Marcia Southard-Ritter, vice president of patient care for St. Francis.

St. Francis officials planned the transition to patient-focused care "for about a year and a half," Southard-Ritter said. "We brought the first areas up to it in April."

All in-patient services are now operating under the patient-focused care system, she said. "By the first of the year we will have our ambulatory services up on it also," she said.

The new approach means patients see fewer care givers, and care is better-coordinated among health care disciplines, Mothes said.

Patient-focused care puts a "high, high emphasis on teamwork," she said.