Kettering Health Network: The Calm of the Network Operations Command Center

John Weimer, VP, Trauma, Emergency Services & Operations Command Center

The facility that you’re walking into right now is our Network Operations Command Center. On our left-hand side, we have our transfer call center nurses and staff. They are talking to physicians that are on campuses that are liable in Teletracking about needs of patients, where do they need to go. They’re also talking to our primary care physicians, our unaffiliated hospitals throughout the region trying to come in. On the right-hand side of the room is our logistics and our transport team, so they’re managing over 40 ambulances. They’re getting patients in-between our facilities, as well as getting folks to testing, whether they need to go back home, and in a critical event, they’re moving our heart attacks, our strokes, any patients that need to go directly to the OR.

We see a thousand eighty patients a day. All that’s now done in this site, where you can see no chaos, it’s quiet, people are happy, they find meaning in the work that they’re doing, but it’s because as a health system, we decided to do something different. I think that’s the amazing thing about this network is we’re a faith-based and our value and innovation run through our blood, so the change in the culture, even though it was hard at first, the buy-in is there because we’re involving people who are seeing what it looks like. These are their neighbors, their loved ones, that’s what the folks are going through here.

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