28 Mercy Hospital physicians appear on the Best Doctors in America® list for 2007-2008. This widely respected list, created by Best Doctors, Inc., results from exhaustive polling of over 40,000 physicians in the United States. Doctors in over 400 subspecialties of medicine appear on this year’s list. In a confidential review, current listees answer the question, “If you or a loved one needed a doctor in your specialty, to whom would you refer?”

Best Doctors, Inc. evaluates the review results, and verifies additional information to meet inclusion criteria. The experts that are part of the Best Doctors in America® database provide the most advanced medical knowledge to patients with serious conditions. Mercy Hospital’s group of experts listed in the database includes world-class specialists in Orthopaedic Surgery, Internal Medicine and Obstetrics and Gynecology.



Dorrie Aber-Noyek first became a volunteer at Memorial Regional Hospital because she wanted to do whatever she could to help. That was 33 years ago and, now, at the age of 101, the Hallandale resident has logged thousands of hours of volunteer service.

Every Thursday morning, Dorrie arrives like clockwork to deliver the mail throughout four floors of the hospital. “She moves faster than many of us half her age,” joked David Reinmund, Director of Volunteer Services for the Memorial Healthcare System’s Eastern Operations. “We are very lucky to have her as a part of our team. ”

Volunteer Dorrie Aber-Noyek receives 100th birthday congratulations from David Reinmund, Director of Volunteer Services, Eastern Operations, and Debbie Tedder, Chief Nursing Officer, Memorial Regional Hospital.

Dorrie says she really enjoys her time as a volunteer “courier” and feels that just as much as she has given, she has gotten back much more. One of the big benefits, according to Dorrie, is the people she has gotten to know through the years and the friends she has made. Many of them came out to celebrate her 100th birthday last year at the hospital.

Volunteers of All Ages

Throughout the Memorial Healthcare System, there are more than 1,000 volunteers on record at any time. While a majority are retired adults like Dorrie, there also are large groups of teens and college students.

Among the long-time volunteers are even a number of couples. They play an integral role in day-to-day operations by handling the refreshment cart, delivering mail, working the information center and even bringing in their dogs as part of Memorial Regional Hospital’s Pet Therapy program.

That’s the point, according to Reinmund. “We want all of our volunteers to feel like they’re a part of our professional healthcare team,” he said. “They are here to do what’s right for our patients and their families.”



Let’s face it. Managed care is squeezing the bottom line out of most medical practices. At the same time, one of the largest operating expenses for a doctor’s practice is rent. Focusing all of your time on increasing your income is only half of the battle. Reducing your operating expenses can also increase your bottom line. Managing expenses in your practice starts with creating a well thought-out, efficient physical platform within which to operate your practice. A well designed layout not only saves money, but enables you to deal in volume without compromising the quality of service you offer your patients.

In order to minimize the cost of your rent, you should only need to lease just enough space that you absolutely need. The waiting room and treatment rooms should be relatively small. For example, if an office is 2,000 square feet, an efficient layout could shave 20%, or 400 square feet, a possible savings of $15,000 annually.

The waiting room should be designed to accommodate 15 to 20 square feet per patient and should be designed to make patients feel comfortable. The seating of the waiting room should be asymmetrical. Patients feel uncomfortable sitting in a circle, facing each other. There should be seating areas, visual barriers, and there should be a permanent exposure of the office and reception area to the waiting area, allowing patients to view the physical activity of the medical staff while in the waiting room. There should also be visual movement within the waiting room, such as closed captioned, flat screen televisions, motion art, or calming, visual-sound devices.

The treatment room should be designed to make the patient feel comfortable, preventing the feeling of being claustrophobic. For example, the treatment room doors leading to the corridor should be French doors, but frosted for privacy. The treatment room ceilings should be painted a lighter color. The lighting should be soft and facing the ceiling. These features create the illusion of height and space, with a calming ambiance. Also, the corridors should have sconces with the lighting facing the ceiling.

A significant amount of attention should be focused on designing a file storage area that is as efficient as possible. The file storage area is merely storage and not income producing space, though it is essential for any medical operation. So, maximizing the utilization of the file storage space reduces the practitioner’s rental space. Therefore, a practitioner should seek professional assistance in designing and constructing file storage systems.

Savitar Realty Advisors owns almost 3 million square feet of office and medical space in six states and understands how critically important it is to have a very efficient, well thought-out design that is suited for the particular needs and operations of a tenant. One of Savitars’ holdings is a medical office building and known as the University Medical Plaza and is located in front of the University Hospital in Tamarac, Florida. Savitar bought this medical building two years ago, completely renovated it, and is offering it for lease to the medical community. Savitar gutted an empty space on the first floor and reconstructed it, creating an efficient, though generic, layout for a wide variety of medical users.

Chances are your practice will be situated in a space for at least five to ten years. (At the University Medical Plaza, many medical practices have been located at the University Medical Plaza for more than twenty years.) Therefore, it is critically important to invest time and some money upfront to create the most efficient and productive design of your office space that dovetails with your practice.



The Healthcare Information and Management Systems Society (HIMSS) is the healthcare industry’s membership organization exclusively focused on providing global leadership for the optimal use of healthcare information technology (IT) and management systems for the betterment of healthcare. Founded in 1961 with offices in Chicago, Washington, D.C., Brussels, and other locations across the United States, Europe and Asia, HIMSS represents more than 20,000 individual members and over 350 corporate members that collectively represent organizations employing millions of people. HIMSS frames and leads healthcare public policy and industry practices through its advocacy, educational and professional development initiatives designed to promote information and management systems’ contributions to ensuring quality patient care.

Through its quality educational programming, HIMSS keeps it members and the industry informed through conferences, webinars, and print and CD-ROM resources. The Society provides numerous forums for exploring current and emerging trends, and solutions to critical healthcare IT issues in the United States and across the globe. These include the Annual HIMSS Conference & Exhibition, HIMSS Summit, HIMSS Advocacy Day, World of Health IT Conference & Exhibition, HIMSS AsiaPac Conference & Exhibition and HIMSS Virtual Conference & Expo.

HIMSS frames and leads national healthcare legislation, regulations, policies, standards and practices on key issues including patient safety, patient care, privacy and security, and national preparedness and response through advocacy and public policy initiatives. The Society focuses on equipping federal and state officials with the knowledge they need to implement appropriate policy and works with all interested stakeholders including individual members, corporations, and collaborating organizations to coordinate and advance healthcare IT and management systems.

Additionally, HIMSS empowers healthcare IT and management systems professionals to chart their own course by giving them the tools they need to stay focused and move forward in their professional development. The Society offers a professional certification program, the Certified Professional in Healthcare Information and Management Systems certification, which measures and demonstrates a professionals’ industry expertise; connects healthcare IT and management systems professionals and companies through JobMine®, the HIMSS comprehensive online job bank; and reaches out to future leaders by providing scholarships to students in the healthcare IT and management systems field.

As a member-focused organization, the Society enhances industry knowledge through committee, task force and work group participation. Member communities bring industry peers together as individual, corporate and organizational members of the Society who can join Chapters, Users Groups and Special Interest Groups to learn and share experiences. Primary topic areas include EHRs in ambulatory, acute and public healthcare settings; patient safety; auto identification and bar coding; privacy and security; and interoperability and integration related to nursing informatics, global standards initiatives, the U.S. standards agenda, regional health information organizations (RHIOs) and Integrating the Healthcare Enterprise (IHE).

HIMSS also publishes a variety of publications in both print and electronic formats. This includes the Journal of Healthcare Information Management (JHIM), the only peer-reviewed journal specifically for healthcare information and management systems professionals, and e-newsletters, books and CDs targeted to the healthcare IT industry. The Society also provides credible research in healthcare IT and management systems through leadership, compensation and issue-oriented surveys.

In the market research area, HIMSS Analytics is a wholly owned not-for-profit subsidiary of the Society. The company collects and analyzes healthcare information related to IT processes and environments, products, IS department composition and costs, IS department management metrics, healthcare trends and purchase-related decisions. HIMSS Analytics delivers high quality products, services and analytical expertise to healthcare delivery organizations, healthcare IT companies, state governments, financial companies, pharmaceutical companies, and consulting firms. Visit www.himssanalytics.org for more information.

Committed to improving healthcare through the realization of the full potential of technology, HIMSS invites interested individuals and organizations within the industry to join the Society in this important objective.



In hospitals across the country, cardiovascular (CV) patients comprise the majority of admissions, and this number will undoubtedly continue to grow due to the aging of the population and greater incidence of CV disease. With higher acuity and co-morbidities like diabetes, these patients are under scrutiny by CMS and other insurers. Furthermore, these patients are more likely than others to suffer from complications due to the stress generated by a hospital admission, which increases the susceptibility for blood glucose abnormalities (often hyperglycemia), and also because of multiple invasive tests and major surgical procedures like open heart surgery. Without tight glycemic control, related complications will often lead to longer lengths of stay (LOS), higher care costs, and increased resource utilization.

For these cardiac and vascular patients, Corazon believes that a service-line, disease-based, case management approach is most effective for decreasing LOS, reducing costs, and managing resources while improving quality outcomes. In fact, focused efforts related to care standardization, such as clinical pathways, disease-specific guidelines, and targeted clinical surveillance for complications, can have a positive effect on these measures and result in better patient care overall.

Utilizing a case manager who brings expert clinical, documentation, and reimbursement knowledge in a niched specialty such as cardiovascular, can align the goals of all practitioners and create a team focused on high quality care at the lowest cost. Based on the Healthways case management model, patients requiring an additional focus on glycemic control, for instance, would also be followed across the full inpatient continuum in coordination with the cardiovascular clinical care team.

In order to impact the quality, timing, and cost-effectiveness of healthcare services within cardiovascular services, both Corazon and Healthways support the use of clinical case managers as an integral part of a multi-disciplinary team that proactively guides patient management. A successful case management approach stratifies low-risk patients and standardizes their care through multi-disciplinary clinical pathways, guidelines, order sets, and/or protocols in order to meet pre-defined quality and cost goals.

Since case managers are integrally involved in understanding the care needs of patients, they can be collecting daily data related to cost/LOS/quality improvement opportunities as well as patient outcomes (clinical and cost) at the ‘point of care’. Corazon and Healthways believe that the case manager is a ‘front line’ staff member privy to a detailed understanding of process improvement opportunities and is essential to the care delivery process. In order to effectively redesign processes as indicated by the aggregated outcomes, the case manager should be part of the multi-disciplinary team in order to make significant and sustainable changes.

In order to allow time for case manager input into the analysis and improvement of patient outcomes, streamlining daily workflow is essential. Daily focus should include patients scheduled for procedures, those admitted overnight, as well as those readmitted (often heart failure patients who require an additional focus or who could be cared for outside the hospital). To identify glycemic patients, additional data might also be required from lab, pharmacy, dietary, and even clinical documentation systems.

Clearly, a successful case management program must not only identify key patient populations for individualized case management, but also oversee and involve bedside staff in using case management tools to facilitate proactive care management for all patients. We believe that effective case managers are integrated within the multidisciplinary care team, utilize information technology to generate efficiencies, and are integral in aggregating and analyzing data in order to drive quality improvement and cost reduction efforts. Indeed, both Corazon and Healthways recommend a solid case management structure that seeks to improve patient outcomes, while reducing hospital costs and maximizing reimbursement.