The Brooklyn Hospital Center (TBHC) is a full-service community teaching hospital in downtown Brooklyn that played an integral role in caring for the community during the COVID-19 pandemic. Traditionally, TBHC served as a safety net hospital for Brooklyn. However, changing community demographics and pressure from emerging competition in the market led TBHC to partner with TeamHealth in April 2021 for emergency medicine services. Through the partnership with TeamHealth, TBHC hoped to improve key performance metrics in the ED and evolve patient perceptions to grow the hospital’s market share in an increasingly competitive market.
Transitioning to a Partnership
Prior to partnering with TeamHealth, TBHC employed clinicians within its emergency department. The facility faced challenges with throughput, patient experience and outreach to the community and medical staff. In addition to improving performance metrics and the patient experience, another key priority was retaining incumbent staff, particularly departmental and residency program leadership. Close collaboration between TBHC and TeamHealth resulted in a 92.8% retention rate.
The transition was very smooth. All but one provider was retained. All department and residency leadership also remained intact. TBHC was an excellent partner in transitioning the clinicians to TeamHealth.”
Ijeoma Akunyili, Regional Medical Director, TeamHealth Emergency Medicine
Improving Performance
Quickly after the successful transition, TeamHealth’s Emergency Medicine Process Improvement team collaborated with clinical staff at TBHC to uncover areas in need of improvement, identify barriers to success and create actionable plans to maximize performance. The results were impressive. This resulted in across-the-board improvements of key metrics, such as door-to-provider time, length of stay and patient experience.
Early implementation of Emergency Department Process Improvement teams led to quicker times from arrival to seeing a provider and overall length of stay. Patient experience scores also improved over the prior quarter.”
Ijeoma Akunyili, Regional Medical Director, TeamHealth Emergency Medicine
The next step for the partnership with TBHC is to deliver similar results for the hospital medicine program. This collaborative approach to performance improvement allows teams to coordinate and share best practices across disciplines, improving continuity of care.
TeamHealth’s Approach
TeamHealth’s ability to tap into local knowledge and activate teams around the country to understand the challenges our partners face is one of our strengths. It’s why we outperform other groups in emergency medicine innovation and performance metrics. We deliver on our promises by leveraging cutting-edge healthcare technology and fostering a culture of collaboration with our partners. Our successful transition process help facilities improve performance and key metrics while maintaining coverage.
To learn more about partnering with TeamHealth, contact us.