This year's Jubilee of Trees Causeway in St. George, Utah featured a beautiful, custom-created bell crafted by Ted Parker, the father of cancer survivor, Torri. When Torri was diagnosed with cancer at 16 years old, Ted was encouraged by the traditional ringing of the bell in the Intermountain Health St. George Regional Cancer Center at the conclusion of a patient’s treatment. “Hearing the bell and seeing the family members around a patient is what brought me hope. It made me think, ‘We can do this’”. He was further encouraged by his daughter’s strength and determination to complete her own treatments, return to health, and move on with her life. From that strength came inspiration. Although Ted had never considered himself creative, he’d always been a mechanical thinker and tinkerer, just like his dad and brother. However, he hadn't used his tinkering to do anything artistic, until he came up with the idea to build a new patient bell, with a little prompting from Torri, her mother, Camden, and her aunt Courtney, also a nurse in the St. George Cancer Center. When asked if there was any correlation between the pieces Ted used for the bell, and the strength of his daughter, he responded “Watching her go through what she did and not complain gave me strength.” Ted continues, “Everything is solid. Steel is strong; it’s not going anywhere. Years from now, it’s still there.”
Traditional clinical rotations for medical students are short – a couple of months. AnaLisa Ortiz, selected for the first longitudinal integrated clerkship offered in our Colorado market, will be at Intermountain Health Superior Clinic for an entire year. Here’s what she’s learning so far.
When it comes to community, the nursing caregivers at Garfield Memorial Hospital in Panguitch, Utah take it to the next level. Located 23 miles from Bryce Canyon National Park, caregivers at Garfield Memorial Hospital see patients from all walks of life. Some patients are residents of Garfield County, others are from halfway across the world. Because of the hospital’s unique proximity to the national park, patient experience and the efforts within the community play a significant role in serving their community. Hosting almost a dozen community events allows Garfield Memorial Hospital nurse and hospital caregivers the opportunity to educate local business owners, tourism employees, and residents about common ailments. By meeting residents at community events, the hope of the team at Garfield Memorial Hospital is to prevent seeing these same residents in an emergency setting. “Our nursing caregivers at Garfield Memorial give their heart to their community,” said Keyona Cole, RN, chief nursing officer, southern Utah and Nevada markets. “What they do matters not only to their neighbors, but on a global scale. It’s an act of service that touches so many lives.”
Meet our chief clinical programs officer at Intermountain Health, Raj Srivastava, MD, a visionary who has spent over two decades revolutionizing patient care and healthcare delivery. From launching innovative pediatric programs to driving quality improvements, his career is a blend of relentless passion and leadership. Discover his standout achievements, the challenges of implementing best practices across a vast healthcare system, and his exciting plans for the future. This leader isn't just making waves but is creating a lasting impact in the world of healthcare.
Intermountain Health St. Vincent Regional Hospital has unveiled the latest design plans for the new St. Vincent Regional Hospital in Billings, Montana. The new hospital will be a 14-floor, 737,000 square-foot facility located on the St. Vincent campus at 27th Street & 12th Avenue North, just east of the current hospital building. The decision to replace the current facility was made to address aging infrastructure and to create a modern and efficient hospital. The guiding principles of the new hospital’s design will meet patient needs for many years to come. “As a leader in Montana healthcare, we are thrilled to break ground in 2025 on our brand-new hospital in Billings,” shared Lee Boyles, president of Intermountain St. Vincent Regional Hospital and the Montana and Wyoming market of Intermountain Health. “Building a replacement hospital affords a once-in-a-generation opportunity to take all we know about modern healthcare and design a hospital for high-quality, efficient care for decades to come.”
Our president and chief executive officer, Rob Allen, recently spoke with Becker's Healthcare about our ongoing efforts to simplify for our caregivers, patients and health plan members. Read on to learn more about two recent examples of how we are simplifying at Intermountain Health, including increasing patient access at Intermountain Medical Center in Murray, Utah, and adopting EHR tools to save our providers' time in responding to patient messages.
A patient was recently discharged from the hospital, where they started insulin. The pharmacist called the patient at home to check on them and ask how they were dosing their medication. While the discharge notes showed they’d been taught how to dose their medication when their blood sugars were elevated, the patient told the pharmacist, “I Googled it.” The pharmacist knew too much or too little of this high-risk medication could lead to serious side effects and provided education on how to dose the insulin based on the provider's instruction. The pharmacist sent a note to the provider explaining there was confusion and recommended reinforcing how to administer and dose the insulin at the next visit to make sure the patient was continuing the dosing plan provided by the provider and not Google. The outreach potentially prevented the patient from returning to the hospital and may have even saved a life. “Proactive care includes anything we can do to prevent someone from needing a higher level of care or developing complications that require additional resources to treat or care for them,” said Jeff Olson, PharmD, MBA, BCACP, director of Pharmacy Population Health. The Pharmacy Population Health team trains their eyes and ears to keep people and communities healthy.
According to the U.S. Centers for Control and Prevention, nearly 20% or 51.6 million Americans experience some form of chronic pain. To better support Utah and Davis Counties’ growing communities and enhance access to care for patients, we've expanded two comprehensive pain management clinics on the campus of Intermountain Utah Valley Hospital in Provo and near Intermountain Layton Hospital in Layton. Now, more patients in those communities will have improved access to specialized physical medicine rehab, neurologists, physical therapists, and behavioral health therapists. “Our goal is to work as a team with the patient at our center of attention, so patents leave our clinics looking forward to life and not another appointment,” said Chris Gappmayer, executive director for the Intermountain Health Medical Group. “If you think about your families almost all of us have either had a need for these specialties or know someone who has. These specialties are definitely needed in our communities.”
Every week, Laundry Services washed 15 carts of items that were mis-sorted, leading to 22,500 pounds of extra laundry. That is, until one caregiver’s innovative solution solved the problem, saving time and the cost of unnecessary laundry.
The lightbulb moment for Jeanne Falk, MD, came when she was working for an insurance company. There was a weight threshold for bariatric surgery – meaning she would have to deny patients who didn’t weigh enough. “I thought, wait a minute. So you have to be in worse shape before we can help you?” she said. That insight led her to a new career quite literally dedicated to helping people live the healthiest lives possible. Trained as an obstetrician-gynecologist, which she practiced for 18 years, Dr. Falk left the field for a time to work as a medical director for an insurance company – which led her back to practice, but not as an OB-Gyn. She now serves at the Lifestyle Medicine and Wellness Center in Park City, Utah as Intermountain Health’s sole full-time integrative medicine provider. We caught up to talk about complimentary medicine, the parasympathetic nervous system, and the two easy things she thinks everyone should make part of their daily routine.
