From SHM

Tower Health teams with SHM as first health system institutional partner

Pennsylvania health system to offer customized SHM benefits

Reading Health System has had a long-standing relationship with the Society of Hospital Medicine. Walter R. Bohnenblust Jr., MD, SFHM, the former medical director of hospitalist services at Reading Hospital, West Reading, Pa., had been an SHM member since 2002. He worked together with his dyad partner, who was trained in the SHM Leadership Academy curriculum, for 20 years. Together at Reading Hospital, they participated in several SHM Center for Quality Improvement mentored implementation programs on topics including opioid management, care transitions, glycemic control, and VTE treatment.

Today, Reading Health System is known as Tower Health, and recently acquired five hospitals in the southeastern Pennsylvania region. John K. Derderian, DO, FHM, director of hospitalist services, is leading the growth of the hospitalist programs and made the strategic decision to become an SHM institutional partner by enrolling his entire staff, which consists of 70 physicians and 20 nurse practitioners and physician assistants who provide acute care in a 711-bed hospital, as members of SHM.

“I am proud to say the hospitalist group at Reading Hospital is committed to continuous improvement and the providers recognize that the partnership will be an effective tool to achieve their goals,” Dr. Derderian said. “The team at Tower Health is excited about the opportunity to partner with SHM and the potential for our providers to have a single source for all of their career needs – continuing medical education and professional development, to name a few.”

Reading Hospital has also enrolled in SHM’s Optimizing Neurovascular Intervention Care for Stroke Patients Mentored Implementation program, which provides resources and training to equip practitioners with the skills needed to ensure continuous quality of care for stroke patients.

Defining the value of the hospital medicine program for Tower Health’s leadership is a topic that is also important to Dr. Derderian. “SHM’s State of Hospital Medicine [SoHM] Report provides exquisite detail of programs around the country, giving Tower Health’s providers invaluable insight into the changes of the hospital medicine landscape occurring across the country and the value of the hospitalist team,” he said.

Eric Howell, MD, MHM, who serves as senior physician adviser to SHM, traveled to Reading Hospital to share his experience as chief of the division of hospital medicine at Johns Hopkins Bayview Medical Center, Baltimore. Dr. Howell shared his metrics dashboard with the Reading hospital medicine staff to provide insight into how to measure the effectiveness of the hospitalist team.

“This was an excellent example of how these institutional partnerships create important dialogue between SHM and our partner members, resulting in customized benefits,” said Kristin Scott, director of business development at SHM.

For more information about SHM’s institutional partnerships, please contact Debra Beach, SHM Customer Experience Manager, at 267-702-2644 or [email protected].

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