St. Michael: Wait times drop from 15 to 2 minutes

It’s been over a year since everything that could go wrong at St. Michael Medical Center in Silverdale appeared to do just that.

Slow emergency room response times, staffing shortages and what was previously described by former and current staff as a chaotic work environment put Kitsap County’s major hospital in a bad light publicly throughout 2022. St. Michael was then quickly thrown from the frying pan into the fire, facing a system-wide online shutdown that was later revealed to have been motivated by a ransomware attack on the Common Spirit Health systems.

The public was furious, with union leaders calling for the resignation of hospital president Chad Melton among other top officials and the potential of denied accreditation becoming all too real.

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It was in that chaos that Melton, months after being faced with a petition of no confidence, said community interaction and listening became key in the work to revive the community’s trust in his hospital.

“After these events occurred, I did a much better job of getting out and meeting with various groups, visiting with as many groups as possible to get a pulse check on how we’re doing,” he said. “Now going out into the community, I hear a lot more positive than I do the things that are negative.”

The numbers appear to back up such claims, according to an August news release from St. Michael, which says collaboration between hospital leadership and the Kitsap County Emergency Medical Services and Trauma Council has led to significant improvements in addressing the healthcare needs of the community.

Communication between staff and leadership, as well as the formulation of a task force created between the hospital and the EMS council in the late summer of 2022, highlighted needs to improve response and wait times while expanding care methods throughout the county.

“We’ve almost sat down in front of the entire hospital,” Melton said about the new listening sessions, “and said, ‘What do we need to do to improve?’ You can’t fix everything, but we took the things that we know that we can fix, and we started making that progress.”

Melton talked of the reduction in nurse turnover rates to 10.5% and improvements in both quality outcomes and patient engagement scores. However, the highlight of the improvements is the cut down of median arrival-to-triage times from around 15 minutes in December of 2022 to just two minutes and under as recently as June.

Officials say that was partially accomplished by the launch of a new process that co-located a triage nurse at registration to get patients accessed more quickly as they come in. Hospital officials also reported the implementation of the Virginia Mason Production System, a management model focused on performance improvement.

The changes have found favor with members of the task force such as South Kitsap Fire and Rescue chief Jeff Faucett. “Transparent data sharing increased understanding of pre-hospital and in-hospital processes, helping the task force to identify challenges we could address. We’re pleased with the results so far and optimistic about further improvements,” he said.

Poulsbo Mayor Becky Erickson added: “To solve the challenges impacting residents of the Kitsap Peninsula, we must unite as leaders and caregivers to develop creative solutions. This task force, which I had the pleasure of observing and collaborating with, is an incredible example of all that we can accomplish when we work together to best serve the community.”

It’s a good start, but Melton said he is very aware that there is still work to be done. Staffing shortages are still creating issues, though not as dire, and given the nature of the previous incidents, it’s a long road to recovery for St. Michael as a whole. “I think that there’s opportunity for improvement, so pressure is not a bad thing,” he said. “I feel now more of an invested interest in Kitsap. I mean, it’s my home. These are my neighbors.”