Innovative Solutions Transform Emergency Departments

Recipient of Vituity’s Practice of the Year Award, Citrus Valley Health Partners Improves Patient Satisfaction and Leadership within Two Years to Become High Performing Hospital System

February 26, 2018 – EMERYVILLE, CA – Vituity, a leading physician-owned healthcare delivery organization, presented Citrus Valley Health Partners (CVHP) with its 2017 Practice of the Year Award in recognition of the hospital system’s substantial improvements in patient satisfaction scores and patient care throughput, as well as successful implementation of clinical integration initiatives and programs.

Since partnering with CVHP in 2015, Vituity’s unique acute care programs and integrated care solutions have transformed the emergency departments at Queen of the Valley, Inter-Community and Foothill Presbyterian hospitals, elevating the CVHP network from the bottom 20th percentile of hospitals in the United States to the top 20th percentile in patient satisfaction.

“The state of our emergency department with our previous practice management partner was inefficient; our hospital working staff was siloed and we didn’t have the right tools or guidance to optimize our operations,” said Robert Curry, President and Chief Executive Officer of Citrus Valley Health Partners. “After partnering with Vituity, we saw dramatic changes to our systems in a short period of time due to their best-in-class programs and leadership platform that unified our internal staff. Their integrated solutions revitalized our emergency department to become a higher performing, more patient-centric experience.”

Prior to CVHP’s partnership with Vituity, CVHP emergency departments had high Left Without Being Seen (LWBS) rates (greater than 3 percent), where a patient enters the emergency department but leaves before examination or treatment, typically due to long wait times or other departmental inefficiencies. In addition to long wait times, ambulance diversion rates were also high and patient satisfaction for the emergency department was in the bottom 15 percent compared with the rest of the nation.

Following the implementation of Vituity’s innovative solutions, patient wait times were reduced from 90 minutes to 20 minutes, LWBS rates in the emergency department fell below 1 percent at all three CVHP hospital locations, and patient satisfaction increased to the top 15 to 20 percent when compared to the national average. Ambulance diversion also dropped from 5 percent to 1 percent. These improvements enabled CVHP to better serve the community, accommodating 10 percent more patient visits year over year.

Through the newfound successes within the emergency department, CVHP plans to build out their emergency department bed capacity, surgery center and imaging center, as well as enhance their online patient portal, medical arts building and outpatient surgery program. The health system will also apply the operational learnings from the Vituity partnership to grow its residency program within their general surgery and orthopedics units.

“When we began working with CVHP, our strategic approach started with integrating new programs that would result in a culture of excellence, bringing together the great leaders that were already working at the hospital and enhancing their operational efficiencies,” said Sergio Hernandez, MD, Vituity’s Emergency Department Medical Director for Citrus Valley Health Partners. “We congratulate CVHP on its success and commitment to providing the best possible care for the local community and patients it serves; they are representative of the results that Vituity’s physician leaders can achieve by working hand-in-hand with hospital leadership teams to optimize patient care.”

The Practice of the Year Award from Vituity recognizes a hospital that has made substantial changes to improve patient care by evaluating its overall operational performance – including patient throughput and satisfaction data – and assessing the initiatives implemented at the institution, as well as factoring in the scores from a survey completed by the hospital’s executive leadership team.

About Citrus Valley Health Partners
Citrus Valley Health Partners is a family of hospitals and a hospice that serves nearly one million residents in the East San Gabriel Valley in Los Angeles County, California. With over 3,000 staff members and nearly 1,000 physicians providing health care services in a safe and compassionate environment across their hospitals, hospice and ambulatory care centers, Citrus Valley Health Partners is able to fulfill its mission of helping people keep well in body, mind and spirit. Visit www.cvhp.org to learn more.

About Vituity
Vituity is a nationwide, multispecialty partnership of top physicians, advanced providers and industry professionals that provides a wide range of integrated acute care expertise designed to proactively lead positive change in the business and practice of healthcare. With more than 3,000 doctors and clinicians, and 250 practice locations serving over 6.3 million patients annually, Vituity’s footprint continues to rapidly expand as it partners with and supports hospitals, health systems, clinics, payers and employers.

Partnering to improve patient lives

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Vituity’s Innovative Solutions Transform the Emergency Departments at Nationally-Recognized Hospital System

Partnering to improve patient lives