Keeping patients safe is the No. 1 priority for nursing staff in the Medical Intensive Care Unit at UTMB’s Jennie Sealy Hospital in Galveston. For the past two years, they have been working to reduce health care-associated infections (HAIs), which patients can get while receiving medical treatment in the hospital.

Crowding in the emergency room and long wait times seem to be the “norm” at hospitals across the country. But Christine Wade and her colleagues in UTMB’s Emergency Department on the Galveston Campus are working hard to change that perception.

For many months, UTMB’s Chief Medical and Clinical Innovation Officer Dr. Gulshan Sharma has been living and breathing UTMB’s No. 1 priority goal—the Best Care initiative, which challenges UTMB to achieve a top 20 ranking among academic medical centers by 2018.

Getting a knee or hip replaced is a major surgery requiring weeks—sometimes months—of recovery. As you can imagine, most patients have numerous questions and concerns for their health care team leading up to the operation.

Mobility is a critical piece of patient recovery. Research shows the earlier a patient gets out of bed and starts moving, the better health outcomes they will experience. However, getting patients mobilized can pose a risk to health care personnel—lifting is dangerous and can lead to employee injuries. A recent collaboration between UTMB Human Resources and Nursing Service is helping to solve that dilemma.

In less than a year, UTMB’s ambulatory clinics have gotten to the heart of a big health issue: hypertension. It’s often symptomless, but can be a dangerous disease—leading to stroke, heart attack, heart failure and kidney disease.

Taking care of patients’ four-legged friends is not part of Judy Trevino’s job description. But that didn’t stop the medical lab scientist at UTMB’s Angleton Danbury Campus from showing compassion when a newly admitted patient needed help.

The UTMB Correctional Managed Care dialysis team works like a well-oiled machine, seamlessly treating about 46 patients at a time between the Estelle Unit in Huntsville and Carole Young Medical Facility in Dickinson. Dialysis machines run nonstop six days a week between 5 a.m. and 10 p.m. to ensure UTMB CMC’s 211 dialysis patients receive care with patient outcomes above state and national standards. The team has found success through interdisciplinary collaboration, innovative use of resources, commitment to excellence and a focus on providing Best Care.

Providing safe and effective patient care is the top priority for UTMB’s Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology. So when they learned UTMB would face penalties of $2.5 million—due to new state rules for Medicaid reimbursement regarding Obstetrical cases for potentially preventable complications (PPCs)—it surprised many.

When the Texas City Urgent Care clinic opened on Oct. 3, UTMB’s Epic Support team was there to help ensure every patient received the best care. Although team members don’t provide hands-on medical care, the expert support they provide to physicians, nurses and other caregivers regarding UTMB’s electronic health record has a significant impact on the care patients receive.

Face-to-face communication is important to UTMB’s Chair of Radiology, Dr. Eric Walser. Since the opening of the Jennie Sealy Hospital, Walser has made it a daily habit to trek from his office in the University Health Clinics building to the new hospital, where he makes a stop on most floors to talk directly with physicians, nursing staff and patients.

Every employee at UTMB contributes to patient care. Whether you work directly with patients on a daily basis or not—each person who wears a UTMB badge impacts the overall patient experience on some level.