Michael Spaeth, working foreperson (left), and Jonathan Shilling, electrician, string up holiday lights at UPMC Muncy and Muncy Place for the 30th annual Lights of Love event. The UPMC campus recently hosted its annual meeting, in which officials reviewed the past year and announced goals for the next. PHOTO PROVIDED

The annual meeting at UPMC Muncy was a time for reflecting on the past year and looking ahead to what the hospital wants to do moving forward.

“The most important thing at the top of every one of our agendas is patient quality and safety, without question. We’ve moved that to the top of our board meetings. We’ve moved that to the top of our management meetings,” said Ron Reynolds, president of UPMC Muncy and UPMC Lock Haven.

“What we’re focused on at Muncy, when we talk about quality and safety…number one, is that we reduce or we eliminate, infections. Number two, that we minimize, any time a patient leaves the hospital and has to come back — we call that a readmission. Those are the two metrics that we look at,” he said.

When a patient is discharged, the goal is to make sure they have the resources to succeed in their home or another facility.

Another goal is to have what Reynolds called “wrong patient errors.”

“Every time we do, we extensively and vigorously look at the reasons why. We want to make sure that we include everyone involved in the care so everybody understands the why, and we certainly wish to avoid them,” he said.

Reynolds highlighted the fact that through last month, there were zero surgical site infections.

“I just wanted to say thank you, first of all to all of our clinical teams. There’s so many, but it’s everyone that helps those clinical teams as well, and it’s also our physicians that’s a great achievement, and kudos to everyone involved,” he said.

In addressing the issue of hospital readmission rates, Reynolds said that they were “very low.”

“The specific number is 3.2% but much more importantly, it’s beating the goal that we set at the beginning of the year, and we’re very proud of that as well,” he said.

“A lot goes into that. When you discharge a patient from our hospital, we want to make sure that they do not return for reasons that are unnecessary. We’re doing a wonderful job with that, and I couldn’t be more proud of the team there as well,” he said.

UPMC Muncy was again certified as a primary stroke center by the Joint Commission, an accrediting organization that monitors the hospital to make sure “that we’re doing everything we say we’re going to do and that we have the highest quality,” Reynolds said.

“For years now we’ve aspired to have that level of care. What that means is there’s immediate availability of a trained acute stroke team when you come to our ER. Secondly, there’s physicians and staff that have been given and taken advanced knowledge of cerebrovascular disease. And then third specialty physicians are available because we work as a system, so we immediately are able to put those people that have suffered a stroke in touch with the appropriate physicians in the care and we’ve met all those criteria,” he said.

Safety, according to Reynolds, is an area that UPMC Muncy has “put a tremendous amount of investment and a tremendous amount of investment and a tremendous amount of attention to making sure that our patients, our visitors and our employees, equally, are safe.”

“They’re safe in every way. That includes this year investing in enhanced surveillance technology on the campus, and that has gone a long way with our staff. They’re very pleased with that. Secondly, we’ve improved even things like our parking lot lighting, so when people this time of year come out from their shift, they feel safe. You know, it sounds like a small thing, but it’s a big thing,” he said.

“And then ongoing training for our staff, and I’ll lead right into that emergency preparedness. That’s another aspect of quality and safety that we’ve really leaned into and worked hard at this year to make sure that our staff know what to do, in the sense of an evacuation, for example, or perhaps, God forbid, an active shooter situation that we’ve all seen on the news. We are very prepared. You can never be prepared enough for that,” Reynolds said.

UPMC Muncy also operates Muncy Place, a senior communities area, which Reynolds noted has again been given a five star status by CMS (Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services) and the Department of Health.

“They measure your quality, your staffing, and a whole host of other things, and that is a very, very important thing for our community and for the people we serve,” he said.

In terms of what the hospital is hearing from patients in all areas of care — inpatient, outpatient and emergency — Reynolds shared that it focuses “around how our patients perceive and how they receive our care.”

“Scores of what our patients tell us are some of the highest and all of the UPMC hospitals in our region have done a remarkable job…(we) couldn’t be more proud of the focus that we put on the patient experience, and that’s what they’re telling us, but it also helps us to address concerns in real time when we’re that vigilant about it, and we’re asking and watching. We don’t typically allow a situation to get to a point where it’s unworkable. We catch it early, and we’re working with families,” he said.

“We’re working with patients to understand their concerns, and typically, we’re able to resolve a vast majority of those so that discipline has a lot of different advantages to it, and also, finally, we pay very close attention to what our patients tell us their comments. We examine every single comment, especially in our emergency department. We learn from them many, many times they’re wonderful, and when they’re not, we ensure that we personally follow up with that patient or that caregiver, and the physicians and caregivers involved in our staff to understand what we could have done better,” he said.

Reynolds touched on the cleanliness of not only Muncy, but at Wellsboro Cole and Williamsport hospitals, saying that the regional facilities are in the top tier in all of UPMC.

“It’s evidenced by not only what our patients tell us, but it’s also evidenced by visitors. And we’ve had many come to see how we do what we do,” he said.

“Recently, we had that, and a group came — 11 people from a given hospital in the West Pennsylvania, and they were absolutely astounded at how clean the facility was, and our Cole facility as well,” he added.

Reynolds spoke on access of services, emphasizing that the local hospitals work as a system.

“We do not view ourselves as just the Muncy Campus. It is imperative that we work with Williamsport whenever possible to help that and even Lock Haven to be honest with you and in the region. But with that comes a lot of things,” he said.

“We continue to evaluate what services that we push to the Muncy campus — what’s appropriate, what’s not, what is good for our consumer. And we’ve done a fairly good job at that, but we continue that,” he said.

“And then I think the real way to look at that is what is the right care and the right place at the right time, and that’s how we regionalize our services,” he said.

He cited the example of women’s health where Muncy has seen significant growth in services. Currently they have two physicians, a nurse practitioner and a midwife. They see about 300 women a month at the Muncy campus.

“We’ve also invested in their space so they could be much more efficient and therefore see more patients as well, thus avoiding a waiting list,” he said.

“We would just ask anyone here that has any issues with getting a patient into any of our services, and certainly with women’s health as well, that you let us know. We’re very open to that,” he added.

They have also add MRI service to Muncy two days a week. Reynolds said that means that if there are waiting lists at one of the other campuses, they are available to schedule a same day appointment if possible.

“That also means that if you have an opportunity and you have a waiting list even say you were at another campus or another system, we are happy to get you in the same day or as best we can the next day, that includes CAT scans, that includes basic imaging services,” he said.

“Just be reminded that we have several campuses that can do that. You’re not always relegated to receiving care on one campus,” he said.

Looking ahead, Reynolds said that one of the main focuses in the coming year will be surgical services.

“We have a really robust series of specialists that do operations on the Muncy campus, for example, urology, ophthalmology, for cataract surgeries, advanced foot and ankle care, gastroenterology, (and) plastic surgery, which is a new addition,” he said.