January 22, 2019

A group of more than 30 Texas Children’s pediatric cardiac intensive care medicine experts – including intensivists, nurse practitioners, cardiologists, cardiovascular surgeons and nurses – recently attended the 14th International Meeting of the Pediatric Cardiac Intensive Care Society (PCICS) in Miami, Florida. It was the largest conference in the society’s history, with more than 700 participants from across the nation and around the world.

Texas Children’s presence was felt throughout the event. Not only were we an institutional sponsor, but our cardiac critical care expertise was on display, with our specialists leading or participating in 40 programs, meetings, research presentations and pro/con debates, which covered a variety of clinical topics, including:

  • Simulation and quality improvement
  • Managing cardiac arrest
  • Bedside rounds
  • Ethics and social media
  • Approaches to single ventricle neonate management
  • Effective communication and counseling
  • CICU monitoring
  • VAD management
  • Healthy work environments
  • Global perspectives on CICU education

“As an educational opportunity, this event is extremely important for our people, as it highlights important new research, training initiatives and innovations for patients,” said Dr. Paul Checchia, Texas Children’s associate chief of Critical Care Medicine and immediate past president of PCICS. “But it also allows Texas Children’s faculty and staff, who are recognized leaders in this field on an international level, to showcase their thought leadership and to educate others.”

PCICS is an international forum with more than 1,000 members worldwide that promotes excellence in pediatric cardiac intensive care medicine. The annual meeting – the only one of its kind dedicated exclusively to pediatric to pediatric cardiac critical care – plays a large role in the advancement of research and training that has the ability to improve the care of pediatric patients with congenital heart diseases and acquired cardiovascular diseases.

“PCICS is the premier scientific meeting of our field, and Texas Children’s ‘swept the board’ at this year’s meeting,” said Chief of Critical Care Dr. Lara Shekerdemian. “I am particularly proud that all of our clinician groups that included nursing were so strongly represented. This reflects our belief in the importance of collaboration at every level – from clinical care to academic productivity.”

This year’s PCICS conference held additional significance for Texas Children’s as Checchia was honored with the Anthony Chang Lectureship, the only named lecture in the field of pediatric cardiac intensive care medicine. The award is named in honor of Dr. Anthony Chang, who founded PCICS 20 years ago. The Anthony C. Chang Award for Excellence in Pediatric Cardiac Intensive Care recognizes an attending physician who has made exemplary contributions to the field of pediatric cardiac intensive care and to PCICS, and who is making a positive difference in the lives of colleagues, patients and families, as well as in the communities where they live.

About Texas Children’s Cardiac ICU

Texas Children’s 48-bed CICU is one of the largest and most active units in the nation, and a vital part of the complete continuum of care offered by Texas Children’s Heart Center® – No. 1 in Pediatric Cardiology and Congenital Heart Surgery in the country, according to U.S. News & World Report.

Every year, we admit more than 1,000 children with heart disease, the majority of whom have undergone heart surgery. And we provide comprehensive, specialized care for each child’s individual cardiac condition.

Our multidisciplinary team includes cardiac intensivists, cardiologists, cardiac surgeons, cardiac anesthesiologists, perfusionists, advanced practice providers, nurses and respiratory therapists, all working collaboratively to provide the best care and outcomes for patients. State-of-the-art facilities coupled with dynamic decision-making in the CICU allow our team to carefully analyze each child’s case and deliver a customized care experience. Additionally, we are a recognized leader in cardiac critical care education and are dedicated to training the next generation of specialists and nurses on caring for a patient population with complex needs and interventions.

Learn more about Texas Children’s CICU.

Since the launch of Patient Access 2.0 Initiative in October 2018, Texas Children’s already has received positive feedback from patient families who describe online scheduling as “simple and convenient.”

“I was surprised that Texas Children’s had this option,” wrote a Texas Children’s family. “It was very convenient and the scheduling process was very easy and streamlined.” Another patient family wrote, “I found the online scheduling button on my child’s physician’s profile page, which I love and appreciated.”

During the first wave of implementation in November, eight specialties went live with online scheduling. The online scheduling option, offered in both English and Spanish, allows current patients, new patients and referred patients to schedule appointments via DocASAP, Texas Children’s online scheduling partner. Patients and their families can also use this new online tool to schedule clinical appointments in Austin.

Patients can access the online scheduling button on Texas Children’s homepage. Once this button is clicked from the homepage, patients land on the new texaschildrens.org/appointment page and can view all scheduling options available. Patients can also access online scheduling directly from provider profiles and department pages, where the scheduling tool appears to schedule a visit with a provider.

On January 23, 11 more specialties – Adolescent Sports Medicine, Centers for Women and Children Women’s Services, Genetics, Infectious diseases, Nephrology, Neurosurgery, Otolaryngology, Pediatric Surgery, Retrovirology, Rheumatology and Orthopedics – went live with this new online feature.

The third wave of online scheduling will go live in March 2019. Once implemented, a total of 30 specialties will be offering this online scheduling option to their patients across the hospital system.

To date, 220 patients have already used DocASAP to schedule their appointments.

Space utilization initiative improves patient access, volume

A major contributor to patient access is the ability to use space within the Texas Children’s system effectively by identifying when and where space is available to optimize patient throughput.

In September 2018, Texas Children’s Space Utilization Initiative and Transition Experience (SUITE) Team tested the concept of space sharing on floors 8 and 9 in Mark Wallace Tower over a 3-month period. The purpose of this initiative was to identify any underutilized or vacant space and determine if another clinic can temporarily “touchdown” in the vacant space to see patients coming in for a clinical appointment.

The team found that provider absences whether it be PTO, conferences and inpatient service rounds equated to 10 to 20 percent of exam rooms being open at any given time. Transparency around when and where these openings occur allowed other providers to request and use the rooms for clinic sessions with their patients. Of the 103 four-hour clinic sessions requested in our first pilot, 43 sessions were accommodated.

“Partnering with the Financial Services team, we estimate an overwhelming opportunity to accommodate an additional 17,000 to 35,000 clinic visits in Wallace Tower alone, with potential to generate over $4.9M in additional margin for Texas Children’s,” said Brian Cordasco, lead for the SUITE team.

On January 14, the SUITE team launched a second pilot on floors 11, 16, and 17 in Wallace Tower that will span a period of three months to identify any opportunities for space sharing across these clinics.

The long-term goal is to apply the lessons learned from these pilots and implement a larger solution, which will include an IS portal to quickly identify space availability across the entire hospital system.

In the short time since the space testing initiative began, clinic staff have already noticed a difference.

“We appreciate this project as it has helped our clinic easily identify where and when space is available,” said Orthopedics Practice Administrator Laurie Roy. “We now have a process to quickly approve or decline requests which saves time.”

Other patient access improvements

Texas Children’s patients and their families continue to benefit from the hospital’s patient access improvements that were implemented last fiscal year. Below is an update on where we are today:

Standard clinic sessions: After evaluating 944 provider templates, additional slots were found where physicians could see patients for a duration of four hours. By standardizing clinic sessions for all specialties, 53,000 new appointments were added to the system that had not existed before.

MyChart (online patient portal) activation: Since launching the MyChart Challenge to engage teams around the patient access initiative, Texas Children’s has seen an increase in the number of patients signing up for MyChart. In Oct. 2017, the organization had less than 8,000 monthly activations compared to over 18,000 in March. To date, Texas Children’s has a total of 72,006 same-day MyChart activations.

MyChart and DocASAP direct scheduling: More than 2,000 patients have already used this MyChart feature to schedule their return appointments. In FY18, more than 20 specialties have gone live with online scheduling for MyChart users making the scheduling process easier for over 3,330 patients. To date, more than 200 appointments have been made via DocASAP.

Electronic Waitlist: Since implementing this feature on MyChart that automatically offers up available appointments via text or email to patients desiring a sooner appointment, approximately 1,000 patients have accepted an appointment on average 55 days earlier than their prior appointment.

Referrals: Referral processes were also streamlined which eliminated the 60 different referral processes that previously existed across the system, thus making scheduling visits easier. The hospital has seen a 74 percent increase in captured referrals since June 2018 with central transcription team in place.

As of January 11, 90.7 percent of Texas Children’s employees had received the flu vaccine. A special thank you goes out to all of you who have taken such an important step in protecting yourselves, your colleagues and our patients and families. Although we are excited to see so much participation across the system, we still want to encourage employees to get their vaccine. It is not too late!

“Flu activity has increased over the past three to four weeks here in Houston, we are already seeing positive flu cases at the Employee Medical Clinic, and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) anticipates flu activity to increase in the coming weeks,” said Dr. Irene Lomeda, the Employee Medical Center physician. “The good news from the most recent CDC data is that the flu vaccine seems to be on target for the major flu strain affecting this year’s flu season with lesser hospitalizations and lesser pediatric deaths.”

Employee Health continues to administer flu vaccines at no cost to Texas Children’s employees. The flu vaccine is also covered at 100 percent under our Texas Children’s Medical Plan, enabling employees to receive their flu vaccine at no cost through any in-network provider or retail pharmacy. If you have any questions about the safety and effectiveness of the flu vaccine, you may call Employee Health at 832-824-2150, option 2.

Staff who do not receive their flu vaccine should wear a surgical mask when providing direct patient care services for the duration of the flu season, which was declared on December 19, 2018. See Required Influenza Vaccination Policy and Procedure for more details.

If you elect to decline the flu vaccine this year, you are required to complete a Flu Declination Form. Prior to completing the declination form, review the Flu Vaccine Information Statement (VIS). The declination form can be found on the Employee Health and Wellness Portal. Follow these instructions to gain access:

Log in to the Employee Health and Wellness Portal. If this is your first time logging into the portal, click “Having trouble logging in” to reset your password. For instructions on how to log in to the portal click here or click here to view step-by step instructions.
Once you log in, click on the “Forms” tab, then select the 2018-Flu Declination Form.

Let’s amplify unity and prevent the spread of infections by practicing good health habits:

  • Cover your mouth and nose when coughing or sneezing.
  • Stay home when you are experiencing flu-like symptoms. If you begin to feel sick with flu-like symptoms while at work, call the Employee Medical Clinic at 832-824-2424.
  • Wash your hands often. Clean and disinfect frequently touched surfaces at home and at work, especially when someone is ill.
  • For more tips on preventing the flu, visit CDC Flu Prevention.

As a Texas Children’s employee, you have the privilege and the responsibility of representing yourself, your department, and most importantly the Texas Children’s brand consistently and professionally through each and every interaction – including your emails.

The messages we send via email create important lines of communication and touch points with co-workers, business contacts, community representatives, patients and their families, and many others.

To help you better refine this communication channel, a new email signature generator tool has been developed that allows employees of every Texas Children’s entity to create a branded email signature.

Signature instructions and guidelines and a link to the email signature generator tool can be found here. You also can find step-by-step details on how to set up a new signature in the email signature generator tool and how to save the signature in Outlook.

Please note the following email signature guidelines when developing your signature:

  • The tool features an option to include the Baylor College of Medicine logo, if you are affiliated with Baylor.
  • Do not include unapproved elements in your signature such as colored text, irregular fonts or formatting, pictures, or quotes.
  • If you work for two or more hospital entities or for a department that serves multiple areas of the Texas Children’s system, please use the Texas Children’s Hospital logo in your email signature. You can reference both entities in text, for example:

John Smith

Project Manger, Texas Children’s® Pediatrics and

Texas Children’s® Urgent Care

  • You are not required to use a Texas Children’s logo or social media links in the signature of your Texas Children’s email. However, if you choose to use a logo or social media link, you can only use approved Texas Children’s logos found in the email signature generator tool.

Note: When pasting the signature into the Outlook “Signature and Stationery” setting, the formatting might appear altered. However, if you click “Save” then “OK” in the Outlook Mail tab as noted in the instructions, the signature should display correctly in any new emails.

For more information or if you have any questions, please contact brand@texaschildrens.org. And, thank you for participating in something aimed at making us all better communicators on behalf of Texas Children’s.

January 15, 2019

Texas Children’s Hospital will have the distinct privilege of being the co-presenting sponsor of the upcoming Houston Marathon Health & Fitness EXPO alongside Houston Methodist.

The EXPO will be held Friday, January 18 and Saturday, January 19 prior to the Chevron Houston Marathon and Aramco Houston Half Marathon, the largest single-day sporting event in Houston and the largest marathon race in Texas, with more than 33,000 participants running the streets of Houston on Sunday, January 20. All runners must attend the EXPO to pick up their race materials while others are invited to attend to interact with other runners and make purchases from a variety of vendors.

“This is a great opportunity to extend our mission and share our passion for youth health initiatives,” said Amber Tabora, senior vice president of Philanthropy, Marketing and Public Relations. “The EXPO is a wonderful event, and we are excited to be part of it.”

Click here to view the promotion video

As a benefit of our three-year co-presenting sponsorship of the EXPO, Texas Children’s was awarded 10 complimentary race entries. On January 7, Texas Children’s donated the often sold-out race entries to 10 Katy Students Run (KSR) members.

Austin Salas, a 16-year-old KSR member participating in the half marathon for the second consecutive year, said at a small gathering at Texas Children’s Hospital West Campus he is extremely thankful Texas Children’s will be helping him reach his marathon goals this year.

“I look forward to helping others know how important eating, sleeping and pacing yourself is when running long distances,” Salas said. “I’m also striving to beat my time from last year. That would be really awesome.”

For the past 13 years, KSR has been empowering young people to set and achieve life-altering goals through mentorship, unconditional acceptance and training for a half-marathon.

“It is great to see the level of commitment that these students have,” KSR founder Jenny Demarest said. “To see them come into the group with no experience, and to watch them grow is amazing!”

In addition to the co-sponsorship of the EXPO, Texas Children’s Hospital is one of the participating charities in the Houston Marathon’s Run for a Reason program.

Run for a Reason is a way for people to achieve a personal fitness goal and help preserve the mission of Texas Children’s Hospital at the same time by allowing runners to run the marathon with a guaranteed entry – on behalf of Texas Children’s.

Running for Texas Children’s Hospital is not just about the race, it’s a promise to our patients. By signing up to run and fundraise on behalf of Texas Children’s Hospital, the donations will directly impact the lives of countless children. The support that we garner allows us to expand our care to even more children who need our help.

Our Run for a Reason contenders will be wearing light blue shirts on race day. Come out and cheer them on and check out the EXPO!

On race day, Sunday, January 20, look for the red Texas Children’s Hospital tent located at the Bed Bath and Beyond entrance off Kirby and West Alabama, across the street from Texas Children’s Pediatrics Pediatric Medical Group.

For more information, download the Chevron Houston Marathon official app on your phone, and click here for all event information.

On January 11, University Pediatric Association, became Texas Children’s Pediatrics’ latest addition.

Last year Texas Children’s Pediatrics expanded outside of the Houston area opening its first primary care site in Austin, today that expansion has made its way to College Station, marking yet another milestone in Texas Children’s path toward creating a network of quality pediatric care for children and families throughout the state of Texas.

Located at 1602 Rock Prairie Road, Suite 1100 College Station, Texas, Texas Children’s Pediatrics University Pediatric Association has seven board certified physicians, two nurse practitioners, and a host of other employees dedicated to meeting the healthcare needs of infants to teenagers. Our expert physicians offer full-service pediatric care including:

  • Prenatal consultations
  • Well-child visits
  • Care of illnesses
  • Care and treatment of minor injuries
  • Vaccinations and immunizations
  • Preventative health care
  • School and sports physicals
  • Hearing and vision screening
  • Health care and nutrition education

“This is the largest practice that we will have acquired in a long time,” President of Texas Children’s Pediatrics, Kay Tittle said. “We are very excited about moving into a new city and providing quality primary pediatric care to children and their families in the College Station area.”

Click here for more information about Texas Children’s Pediatrics University Pediatric Association.

Texas Children’s Cancer Center recently honored Senior Project Manager Robin Raesz-Martinez with the Bravo Award for her work with the KidsCanSeq Project, which investigates how tumor genetics may help inform treatment decisions and the impact of genetic findings on cancer surveillance, genetic testing and health care utilization.

The Bravo Awards are a new quarterly award aimed at recognizing members of the Cancer Center who go above and beyond to ensure our patients and families receive the best possible care.

Raesz-Martinez’s nominees praised her tireless work with our patients, her role in managing the KidsCanSeq project, as well as her teaching, not only Cancer Center staff, but staff across the state who are collaborating with Texas Children’s on this project.

Congratulations!