Personal Healthcare Technology Sunrise Hospital and Medical Center and the Sunrise Children's Hospital

The Sunrise Hospital and Medical Center, which includes the Sunrise Children's Hospital, is an approximately 55-year-old facility located in Southern Nevada; it serves the greater Las Vegas area and the surrounding communities. The Sunrise Health and Medical Center is proud of its quality initiatives to ensure patient safety and comfort, including direct approaches to pharmaceutical safety such as safe medication dosing via smart pump technology, and bar coding on medications. As well, the Sunrise Health and Medical Center does not discriminate with respect to HIV / AIDS or in any manner related to employment, program participation, admission and/or treatment.

Sunrise has been rated as the most popular area hospital for 15 years in patient surveys. As well, Sunrise Health and Medical Center has developed community outreach programs for health education in a variety of areas, often based upon community need.

The CAMH 2000 Management of the Environment of Care initiative outlined protocols for hospitals to follow. Many of these areas have been a point of focus for the Sunrise Health and Medical Center: [1] property and security issues for all patients, visitors, and staff; [2] security incident investigations; [3] security management program and personnel; [4] and identification system for staff, patients, and visitors; and [5] other important security issues.

The Sunrise Health and Medical Center has also sought to be au courant with technology innovations. Some of these include pharmacy automation, for example the use of bar-coding, and the only 'gamma knife' in the area - a non-invasive Cobalt-60 radiation method used in treatment of cancer cases such as metastatic melanomas that have reached the brain.

The Sunrise Health and Medical Center is also following all governmental regulations to be in compliance with new governmental programs for hospital funding and financing.

Overall, the Sunrise Hospital and Medical Center, as well as its affiliated Sunrise Children's Hospital are working to not only be current in terms of Hospital Regulatory advisory suggestions, but to be leaders in terms of medical and information technology innovations.

Introduction

In the following manuscript, the Sunrise Hospital and Medical Center is briefly reviewed, with a focus on the manner in which this health organization has addressed the fundamental criteria of providing the highest quality of care to patients. The report addresses health system technology and modern updates for such organizations, from needs assessment to work-flow. For any modern health care system, patients are customers, as are their families and the community, and the end goals are the provision of high quality health care to this customer base. However, the wider customer base includes not only the patients, but also the families, and the local community. Appropriate training for staff includes not only the physicians and nursing staff, but also health trainees, support staff, and employees who must monitor and maintain the information technology (IT), the janitorial staff, and even the diet kitchens, as well as administrators and support staff at all levels. There have been massive recent changes in informational technology, rising new global infectious diseases of concern, such as Ebola, and even HIV / AIDS, and new legislation intended to improve health care.

The Sunrise Children's Hospital and Sunrise Hospital & Medical Center have been the premiere health care centers in southern Nevada for over 55 years. Their focus is to provide integrated health-care services to the community, through service to patients as well as considering the needs of employees including the medical staff of physicians and nurses, and clinical and laboratory staff, and associated technical, information technologists, and janitorial and support staff. The Sunrise Hospital and Medical Center (SHMC) seeks to provide not only 'measurable quality' but also integrated health care that is cost-effective, as well as being comprehensive. The Sunrise Health and Medical Center views its physicians as partners, and together both physicians and the Hospital seek to provide safe care to each and every patient. Safe medications, and patient safety, are a priority goal, one aspect of which is being addressed through modern 'smart-pump' technology, as well as through the use of bar-coding for pharmaceuticals and other pharmacy-delivered items of treatment such as intravenous (IV) solutions. As a primary consideration the Sunrise...

This non-discriminatory policy applies to employment, admission, activities, treatment, services, and participation in programs (Sunrise Hospital, 2014a).
Stroke management and heart care are only two of the many medical programs for which the Sunrise Health and Medical Center has received national recognition; innovation and clinical excellence are also part of the tradition for which the Sunrise Health and Medical Center is simultaneously proud, with a continued focus on advancement. Over the last 15 years, Sunrise has continually been rated as the patients' most preferred hospital (Sunrise Hospital, 2014b). The Sunrise physicians and staff have considerable and high-level expertise and training from leading global institutions, and both the hospital programs and ongoing quality initiatives make Sunrise one of the world's leading institutions.

The Las Vegas community is also served by the Sunrise Hospital and Medical Center as well as by the Sunrise Children's Hospital; these institutions have established both 'on-demand' community educational programming, as well as more long-term service programs. Community out-reach programs range from support groups and general health/welfare topics to staff development programs. Direct community programs include: nutritional, diabetic and pre-natal classes; information and training classes addressing both specific disease processes and general health and welfare topics; child safety programs; women's health programs; childbirth preparation classes; student educational activities; health fairs; heart health lectures; stroke seminars and screenings; pediatric advanced life support (PALS) training, cardio-pulmonary resuscitation (CPR) classes, and even driving programs. As well, the educational opportunities offered by the Sunrise Hospital and Medical Center are delivered in both Spanish and English as needed (Nevada Hospital Reporting, 2011).

The Modern Hospital

Hospital 'business' strategy is dependent upon and shaped by a variety of both internal and external forces (Devers, Brewster, & Casalino, 2003). To some extent, hospital occupancy rates have been on the decline, although some communities report recent increases. Indeed, insight into the approaches used by hospitals in order to successfully compete can provide understanding of significance to developments in the overall health care market. Because a hospital's patients are customers, competition has led some hospitals to adapt strategies that parallel those used in retail businesses; these are deemed necessary in order both to retain and to attract consumers, patients, and specialists. For example, hospitals may invest in both out-patient and in-patient services that are increasingly perceived as 'high tech', which may not only be large and expensive investments, but may also be duplication of services that are already available elsewhere in the community.

What are some of the forces shaping the business strategies of the modern hospital, as exemplified by the Sunrise Health and Medical Center? Major factors impinging upon a hospital from the outside include: labor supply; economic and demographic trends; medical technology; regulation; payment methods; behavior of private and public purchasers; and hospital and health plan characteristics, including type and number of any competitors (Luke et al., 1999). The Sunrise Hospital and Medical Center and its associated Sunrise Children's Hospital have implemented a Mission Plan, which is to 'achieve an unequaled level of measurable quality in the delivery of a continuum of cost-effective, integrated health-care services that are responsive to the needs of the patients, physicians, employees and community' (Nevada Hospital Reporting, 2011).

To that end, the support staff, laboratory and clinical staff, dietitians, nurses, and physicians at the Sunrise Hospitals have made a commitment to provide compassionate care that is of the highest quality to patients. A portion of this commitment includes a focus on safety and quality, through the use of monitoring initiatives. A second portion includes attentive listening to patient (and family member) comments both during and after treatment. Information gathered can be used to make changes and improvements in individual care and various treatment aspects. Informed patients and access to information for patients is an important part of health-care for patients. As well, the Sunrise Health and Medical Centers are working with both the United States Department of Health and Human Services and the Nevada Hospital Association to submit data on a voluntary basis that can be accessed by patients for additional information (Sunrise Hospital, 2014).

Sunrise Health and Medical Center is working to sustain ongoing and initial successes as well as to achieve broader success in many areas. To that end, several new development and implementation strategies are in process. Some of these include new and sophisticated systems for managing patient information via information technology (IT). Areas that must be addressed for such information technology to work on a system-wide, overall hospital basis include: vendor support and performance; user training and acceptance; interface, hardware, and connectivity requirements; database management and file building; down-time protocols and planning; and roll-out strategies and pilot site selection (Protocare Sciences, 2001).

Hospital nursing care is a topic of some importance that is not…