While most healthcare vendors were impacted negatively by the COVID-19 pandemic, ImageFIRST, the largest and leading provider of medical linens in South Florida, grew on the strength of its service and reliability. They were able to persevere through the hardships and continued to provide its healthcare clients with exceptional care and quality service.

“We’re becoming great at helping to remove the headaches from some of our clients so they can focus on patient care,” says Jay Juffre, Executive Vice President of ImageFIRST. “We’ve taken our RFID technology to another level in terms of our ability to manage scrub programs and fluid resistant gowns.”
 
During the pandemic last year, the company started manufacturing its own line of fluid resistant isolation gowns.
 
“We added RFID chips in all of our scrubs and isolation gowns to track what’s coming and going as well as better manage our clients’ needs.” says Juffre.
 
The ScrubVAULT® System allows full accountability for the scrubs being used and by whom. Providers are able to better manage their inventory because the system relies on UHF RFID technology. This ensures providers have the scrubs they need when they need it, making it more beneficial to them and ultimately, also to their patients by freeing up staff to focus more on patient care.
 
ImageFIRST has also taken the ScrubVAULT System to a new level, according to Juffre. They added a Mop Accountability Program which now allows providers to take mops from the same secure vault that can be used with scrubs too. The program leverages an easy-to-use cabinet with a compact footprint that securely stores and dispenses RFID-chipped microfiber mops, giving clients inventory visibility and loss accountability. ImageFIRST’s hospital grade microfiber mops paired with its Mop Accountability Program will help keep any facility clean and safe for staff and patients while controlling costs.
 
“This program allows us to know who takes what when and whether they returned it,” explains Juffre. “It really helps manage those programs that, traditionally, have been headaches to administrators or to hospitals. The nice thing about this program is that it not only increases staff engagement and improves patient care, but it also helps save the health system money, which is always important.”
 
According to Juffre, ImageFIRST is now becoming more involved with facility services by offering products such as hand sanitizers, soap, paper towels, and toilet paper.
 
“We saw many of our customers having a hard time getting these items during COVID last year,” he says. “We saw a need and wanted to continue to be a solution for greater patient satisfaction and take that burden off our clients. A hospital administrator shouldn’t have to worry about running out of toilet paper. The staff needs to focus on patient care.”
 
During the pandemic, Juffre says their response was a testament to the culture and the foundation that it has built.
 
“We put three goals together: keep everybody safe, take great care of our customers, and keep everybody employed,” he says. “Those were bold goals. We executed on the strength of our Customer Advocates coming to work every day and our associates being very dedicated to safety —a value of ours long before COVID broke. So, we sort of doubled down. We doubled down on our culture and what we’ve built as a company. We could have developed any goals in the world, but without the team executing, it wouldn’t have happened. We executed well during the pandemic because of the foundation that we’ve built over the last 50 years.”
 
“ImageFIRST’s approach has always been different than your traditional linen company,” stresses Juffre. “We try to provide solutions and manage a client’s program. We focus on staff engagement and patient care, as opposed to focusing on linen. I think that’s very unique. Many linen companies focus on picking up linen, washing it and bringing it back. What we do is ask clients, ‘How can we partner with you and what’s important to you?’ The proof that what we do works is in our customer loyalty and our customer retention. When people come into our program, they tend to stay with us for a long time.”


Palm Beach Gardens Medical Center announces the appointment of Denise Kvapil, MSN, BSN, to Chief Nursing and Operations Officer.

Prior to her appointment, Kvapil served as the Chief Nursing Officer at the hospital. In her role, she was responsible for overseeing and coordinating the daily operations of Palm Beach Gardens Medical Center’s nursing departments. She ensured the hospital’s tradition of delivering high quality patient care is, and will continue to be maintained.
 
Before joining the team at Palm Beach Gardens Medical Center, Kvapil served as the Vice President of Patient Care Operations / Chief Nursing Officer at Christ Hospital in Jersey City, NJ. She has over 25 years of experience in the healthcare field and hospital administration. Kvapil is a graduate of Rutgers University in Newark, New Jersey, and earned her Masters of Science in Nursing from South University. 


According to Jean Seaver, many people think that when nurses graduate from nursing school, they have all the training they need to go into specialty areas – whether working in the recovery room, in surgery, the operating room, or in other capacities. She pointed out, however, "They don’t. They require a lot of advanced training and credentialing to get to those levels for critical care." And Seaver is the one who can help get them there.

Seaver, Associate Vice President of Learning and Development at Broward Health, said her position in the Department of Learning has three components: clinical education programming, which includes clinical training/in-service education to keep practice knowledge and skills up to date, advanced clinical content to prepare nurses and other professionals for roles in the ED and OR; staff education and leadership development through Broward Health Leadership University, for developing future leaders for succession planning; and workforce development, which focuses on maintaining high-quality relationships with Broward Health’s academic partners to provide clinicals and attract new talent for the workforce pipeline.
 
Seaver expanded on those components by saying, for example, that Broward Health operates a virtual, high-fidelity simulation hospital to enable clinical staff to gain more proficiency in certain situations. "We have the caregivers perform through evidence-based, computer-based scenarios with mannequins that are lifelike, so they can get experience managing issues like strokes, cardiac arrest, or internal hemorrhages. This provides a safe environment to gain necessary skills for proficiency."
 
The clinical education function oversees and manages the nurse residency program, which includes considerable clinical training. "If we hire nurses and they want to become an ER nurse or a critical care nurse or an OR nurse, we manage that training for them. A lot of developing nursing skills and competencies are needed to manage the care of acute-care patients across different levels of care in our system."
 
Also involved is a large Learning Management System, in which compliance modules are built to meet all types of regulatory compliance at the corporate level. "Healthcare is the most regulated environment you’re going to find, because we have state regulations for licensing, regulatory body standards that include management of biomedical waste, electrical safety issues, patient safety, radiation – there’s a lot of training that has to go on behind the scenes to meet those requirements on an annual basis."
 
In addition to her responsibilities at Broward Health, Seaver serves on the board of the Nursing Consortium of Florida. Previously the board secretary, she is currently president-elect for the next two years, and will serve as president for two more after that. Seaver said, "The Consortium has a mission to educate the public on the purpose and importance of nursing and nursing education, and it also serves as an education forum." She chairs the educational conference planning committee, and said the purpose of the two annual conferences is to connect everybody in South Florida to what’s happening – what they can do together, what the solutions are, and how to share that information. "We are also going to look at other matters , such as how to change our approach to educating nurses, given with what happened with the pandemic challenges."
 
COVID did indeed cause an upheaval in all facets of life, especially the medical field, and Seaver agreed: "Education has been disrupted. We need to find more support for our clinical coaches – provide the new graduate clinical staff more orientation time, more access to simulation to gain more skills." She said Broward Health’s Chief Medical Officer was extremely supportive in the early return of clinical students to the hospital setting to continue their clinical training. They returned earlier than many other hospitals allowed. "By doing that, he enabled us to bring them back to continue training with the appropriate PPE and other safety needs; he understood we have to get the students back to get them prepared to pass their licensing exams so they can be hirable and be a future part of the healthcare team."
 
However, once the students returned, they had to be apprised of the changes. "Medical science was changing by the month. You can see that with the guidance the CDC gave us with COVID precautions. We were constantly updating education materials; it’s a communications methodology to keep people current to enable them to be effective in meeting the mission of Broward Health, which is to provide quality care to the population we serve, and make a difference in this county."
 
Seaver summarized by saying, "I encourage people to go into education. People often want to be clinical nurses, they want to be advanced registered nurse practitioners, but education is the foundation that helps these people to grow and develop. In my department, I’ve hired people who started their careers as nursing assistants; then they went back to school and became an LPN, became an RN, got an associate degree, then got their bachelor’s degree, then their master’s, and then they were educators and moved on to become nurse managers and Chief Nursing Officers. Education is a wonderful opportunity to help and see people grow."


Important Facts During Better Hearing & Speech Month – May 2021

Learning and education begins long before a child enters a classroom. From the very first time you speak to your infant (“I’m your mom” and “Daddy’s been waiting to meet you”), your baby is listening and learning language. In fact, your baby is listening to the world for almost an entire year before she or he utters her or his first word. If all parts of the hearing system are not functioning properly, delays in speech and language are likely to occur.
 
Hearing loss is the most common disorder present at birth, but unlike other disorders, hearing loss is invisible and frequently goes undetected until age 2, later if the hearing loss is less severe or in only one ear. Even mild hearing losses and hearing loss in one ear can affect speech, language, listening skills, and educational performance. For this reason, KIDZ Medical Services began the First Sounds Newborn Hearing Screening Program in 1999, long before it became mandated by law.
 
Babies can’t tell us if they are not hearing well. Prior to the introduction of newborn hearing screening programs in Florida, the average age of identification of hearing loss was 14 months or greater. Since the initiation of the newborn hearing screening, the average age of confirmation of hearing loss has decreased to 2-3 months of age.
 
The Importance of Newborn Screening
The later a hearing problem is detected, the more difficult it will be to overcome these delays. That is why it is so important to have your newborn’s hearing screened at birth and to follow up with a pediatric audiologist if your newborn doesn’t pass this screening. The audiologist will conduct further testing to determine how your baby is hearing, whether or not there is a problem, and if so, whether it is temporary or permanent. Delaying the newborn hearing screening can delay a diagnosis and treatment if a hearing loss exists. If your baby wasn’t born in a hospital, talk to your pediatrician about where you can go to have your baby’s hearing screened, or visit a pediatric audiologist in your area.
 
Newborn hearing screening is only the first step in early detection of hearing loss. Hearing can change at any time as your child grows. Additionally, any baby who has spent time in the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit, has a blood relative with hearing loss that occurred in early childhood, or has any type of malformation in their head or ear may be at slightly higher risk for developing hearing loss. These babies should be monitored periodically by a pediatric audiologist to ensure that no changes in hearing are detected.
 
Signs of a Potential Hearing Issue
Parents and other family members are usually the first to suspect that their baby or child may have a hearing problem. Some signs to look for are:
• Lack of awareness or inconsistent responses to sounds by 6 months of age
• Does not respond when you call his/her name at 7 months to 1 year
• Does not point to familiar objects by 15 months
• Does not follow simple directions by 1-2 years
• Does not say 6 – 20 words by 18 months
• Does not put two words together by 24 months (“want juice,” “daddy go”)
• Pulling or scratching at ears
• Difficulty in school at any age
 
Parents should never take a “wait and see” position, but should see a licensed audiologist immediately to discuss any question or concern about hearing, speech or language development or educational performance.
 
Even if your child is diagnosed with a permanent hearing loss, today there are many opportunities for a complete and fulfilling life. Children are perfect the way they are, and allied health professionals can help them achieve their best. There are many resources and support for children and families so that your child can lead a normal and healthy life and achieve all their goals, hopes and dreams.


The Health Care District of Palm Beach County recently welcomed Juliza Kramer to the new role of Marketing and Branding Manager. In her new role, Kramer will focus on growing the Health Care District’s presence in the community and expanding initiatives to engage current and new patients to the safety net system’s diverse health care services.

“I am excited and humbled by the opportunity to serve our community and spread the word about all of the amazing work the Health Care District has been doing,” said Kramer, who has over ten years of experience in marketing and branding in Palm Beach County. “I look forward to raising awareness about all of the quality services we offer in the county that has always been my home.”
 
Kramer brings a strong public relations background and experience in both the private and non-profit sectors. The new position is timely as the Health Care District serves in roles never contemplated before the pandemic, such as meeting the need in the community for access to COVID-19 vaccinations and testing.