- GivingGeneral Page Tier 3BlogEvery year, new and current community partners just like you, as well as grateful patients and friends of AAMC, make philanthropic gifts to support the hospital. Charitable donations of all sizes are vital to supporting our important caregivers, purchasing cutting-edge equipment, and providing continuing education for nurses and physicians. As a non-profit community hospital, donations offer much needed funding as the costs of providing high quality care continue to outpace medical reimbursements. With your gift, you make a difference every day for the patients that we serve. As your community hospital, so can we. Making an effort to connect more personally with our donors, we embarked on a phone outreach campaign last year. You may have received a phone call from an AAMC student volunteer, nurse, or auxilian who called to explain the importance of sustaining AAMC’s Annual Fund. David Beck, a volunteer patient family adviser at AAMC, and his wife Bobbette have been charitably giving to AAMC for more than a decade. Last fall, they answered the call and made a gift to support the greatest needs of the hospital. “AAMC is much more than your local hospital. It is an integral part and a cornerstone of our greater Annapolis community. The caring demeanor of everyone you come in contact with is so reassuring to both patient and family. And this is just in addition to an outstanding medical staff and facility. We are proud to support AAMC,” the Becks say. Perhaps you or someone you know – a family member or neighbor, a colleague or a friend – has been touched personally by the high-quality healthcare services offered at AAMC. Our goal is to continue this long-standing tradition of providing our community with excellent healthcare right here in our own backyard. But we can’t do it alone! We look to you, our friends in the community, for support. The Annual Fund is the cornerstone of that support. When you make an unrestricted gift to AAMC, we apply it to a high priority need or initiative. You may also designate it toward a specific area of care within the hospital. We are currently planning our upcoming telemarketing campaign for fall 2017, and our callers are looking forward to speaking with you. For Damaris Dipini, a medical assistant for microvascular surgery at AAMC, hearing donor’s stories and enthusiasm for their community hospital is what she looks forward to the most when she makes her calls. “I am amazed at the fact that this wonderful place that I work continues to thrive because of people in the community that give back so graciously without blinking an eye,” says Damaris. “Through the telemarketing campaign, I get to genuinely thank the donors who graciously give so that the patients I care for can continue to get advanced treatment. I am honored to be a part of a community that has such a giving heart.” At AAMC, it’s not about how much you give. Every gift of every size is important. We hope you consider continuing your support through the Annual Fund every year, and we look forward to speaking with you during our next campaign! For more information about how you can support AAMC’s Annual Fund, contact Gabby Pasternak Fitzmaurice at 443-481-4735 or [email protected].
- Community, Patient & Family AdvisorsGeneral Page Tier 3BlogAppointments. Hospitalizations. Emergency room visits. Tests. Procedures. Medications. Injections. Tubes. Specialists. Primary care. When you have a complex and serious illness, navigating the health care system can be a confusing and frustrating experience. Yet it doesn’t have to be. Perhaps you have been in the hospital recently, or you have a new diagnosis of a serious illness, or your chronic condition is not under control. Your physician may have asked for help in helping you. This help has come in the form of community care navigation. What is the nature of this help, and what can you expect? A community care navigator helps you understand, cope with, and master what is happening with your health. Community care navigation helps you to restore your personal wellbeing, reach your treatment goals, and maintain independence. Community care navigation happens during and between doctors’ office visits and hospital stays. Your relationship with your community care navigator may last weeks or months. Services are tailored to your needs, and may include managing medications, accessing benefits, coordinating care that you receive from multiple doctors, building self-management skills, and a host of other activities. Services often include in-person visits, either at your home or a location you choose. The community care navigator is a skilled professional who will identify your goals of care and how you want to reach them, in a way that makes sense to you and your family. She or he maintains contact with your physicians and may accompany you to appointments. What else does a community care navigator do? Community care navigation complements other services you may receive, like home health nursing. Home health nursing provides technical assistance like IV therapy, wound care, and physical therapy: services that are billed to you or your insurance company. In contrast, community care navigators create a coaching relationship with you and your family, helping you regain wellness and self-sufficiency. Typically there is no bill to you or your insurance company. Across the country, community care navigation has become routine and expected for those of us coping with complex, chronic illnesses. Hospitals commonly work with care partners in the community to provide these services. How do you access community care navigation? Usually your physician, whether at the hospital or her practice, will recommend that a care navigator connect with you. You might meet with the care navigator before you leave the hospital or practice. If not, this care navigator will reach you by phone and will describe her or his services. You will be asked if you would like to receive services. You reserve the right to decline them. Those who receive community care navigation services are often able to maintain independence and improve their conditions by gaining access to benefits that otherwise were unknown or inaccessible to them. By partnering with a community care navigator, you are taking charge of your health and your future. Patients who have received these services are quick to recommend them to friends and family. Should your doctor recommend community care navigation to help you master a chronic and complex illness, consider this to be an opportunity to maintain and enhance your personal wellbeing and your ability to direct your health care choices. If these services haven’t yet been offered to you, and you feel that community care navigation would help, speak up and ask your doctor to access these services for you. Locally, AAMC is providing physicians in its Collaborative Care Network access to community care navigation services that are free of charge. As part of a shared vision, Living Healthier Together, AAMC has partnered with the local medical community to improve wellbeing for individuals and families coping with complex, chronic illnesses. Contributor Patricia Czapp, MD, is chair of clinical integration at Anne Arundel Medical Center.
- News & Press Releases, OrthopedicsGeneral Page Tier 3BlogFor six straight years, the Center for Joint Replacement at Anne Arundel Medical Center has been Maryland’s busiest hip and knee replacement program, drawing patients from all over the country. Recently the Center received national attention through these notable rankings: U.S. News and World Report recently named AAMC a high-performing hospital for hip and knee replacements. Orthopedic Network News ranked AAMC among the top 10 hospitals in the country for Medicare knee and hip replacements. Center for Joint Replacement’s annual report Two years ago, Anne Arundel Medical Center became the first hospital in the state to top 2,000 knee and hip replacement surgeries in one year — a pace that continued last year, when surgeons performed 2,221 joint replacements. Other findings from the Center for Joint Replacement’s annual Joint Outcomes Report include: High quality at a low cost: The Center provides the highest quality care at the lowest possible cost. The average cost of joint procedures at AAMC is 13 percent lower than Maryland’s average. Shorter hospital stays: The average joint replacement patient stays at AAMC for 2.16 days. This is 21 percent less than the average length of stay at Maryland hospitals and 23 percent less than the national average. Our patients want to get back to their homes, and to their lives, as soon as they are ready. Our extensive research shows that early discharge does not lead to an increase in complications or people needing to return to the emergency room. Plus, we see that patients are much happier to be out of the hospital and home with family and friends as quickly as possible. High patient satisfaction: The Center for Joint Replacement’s patient satisfaction scores have remained in the top 5 percent of the nation for the past six years. “We know our patients demand transparency about our outcomes,” says Paul King, MD, orthopedic surgeon and medical director of AAMC’s Center for Joint Replacement. “We believe publishing our joint outcomes enhances our culture of continuous improvement and increases value for our patients. Our patients know we’re a trusted, expert partner in their care.” You can find the full 2016 Joint Outcomes Report at askAAMC.org/JointOutcomes. To learn more about hip and knee arthritis, sign up for our free Hip and Knee Pain 101 class. You’ll learn how to get relief and have your questions answered by the doctors at the Center for Joint Replacement at AAMC.
- CommunityGeneral Page Tier 3BlogHave you walked around your community lately and found a painted river rock with a message of encouragement or happy artwork that made you smile? These random acts of kindness are popping up not just in Anne Arundel County, but throughout the world and we’ve decided to get on board! The official Kindness Rocks Project began in 2015 in Cape Cod when Megan Murphy walked to the beach after losing both of her parents. She saw the beach as a place where she would be closer to her parents, and where amidst the sound of the crashing waves, they could hear her thoughts and provide continued guidance in her life. Several beach visits later, Megan began bringing a sharpie to the beach with her so that she could write messages of hope and kindness on the rocks for others to find. It wasn’t until a friend of hers found a ”kindness rock” and told Megan, that Megan realized these simple acts of kindness may be just as healing to others as they were to her. And now, two years later, kindness rocks have spread throughout the world. AAMC is dropping our version of kindness rocks throughout the main hospital campus with the hashtag #AAMCRocks. As we invest in caring for our patients, we encourage everyone to care for one another. This includes spreading kindness to all of the unique individuals who make up our community. If you find one of our rocks, we hope you’ll take a picture and share it with us on your social media page using #AAMCRocks, or by posting to AAMC’s Facebook page. Spread the kindness by ‘re-planting’ the rock where someone else will find it, or painting a rock of your own to put out in the community. Join the movement! Read our Step-by-Step How-To Guide to get started.
- Men's Health, News & Press Releases, Women's Health, PediatricsGeneral Page Tier 3BlogUnder normal circumstances, most people know it’s a bad idea to look directly at the sun. But with the Great American Total Solar Eclipse on Monday, Aug. 21, people may be tempted to gaze upward. Not so fast, ophthalmologists say. Staring into the eclipse will burn your retina. “Even the slightly weaker sunlight during an eclipse is still very intense solar energy,” says Sam Boles, MD, an ophthalmologist with Anne Arundel Medical Center. “That energy focused directly on the retina can seriously damage your eyesight.” A total eclipse — when the moon completely covers the sun — will be visible across parts of the entire country. But other areas, including Maryland, will see a partial solar eclipse. The moon will cover about 80 percent of the sun in our area, according to news reports. John Avallone, MD, a pediatric ophthalmologist with Anne Arundel Medical Center, compares staring at the eclipse to using a magnifying glass to direct sun at an object on the ground, causing it to burn. It’s also the same as the burn that will come from shining a laser pointer into your eye. “The intense rays from the sun will burn your retina,” Dr. Avallone says. “You end up with a hole in your vision where that burn is.” So what can you do to safely witness this historic event? You have three choices: Both Dr. Avallone and Dr. Boles say you must use approved solar eclipse viewers. Look for solar filters that meet international standard ISO 12312-2. NASA and the American Astronomical Society have a list of recommended vendors who are selling approved glasses. Build a pinhole projector to watch the eclipse. This device will project the image of the eclipse onto another surface. NASA has instructions on how to do that. Enjoy images of the eclipse on TV or online. Dr. Avallone emphasizes the importance of closely supervising children who are wearing eclipse glasses. You want to make sure they’re looking through them, and not over or underneath the lenses. He adds that it is safe for people to be outside without the approved glasses if they’re not looking directly at the eclipse. The American Optometric Association and the American Astronomical Society also offer the following tips: Before you look at the sun, cover your eyes with the eclipse viewers while standing still. Glance at the sun, turn away and then take off your viewers. Don’t remove them while looking at the sun. If you normally wear glasses, you can keep them on, but put the eclipse glasses over them. If you happen to be in the “path of totality,” which stretches from Oregon to South Carolina, you can take off your eclipse glasses when the moon is fully covering the sun. But once the moon begins shifting and the sun reappears, you have to put them back on. See a doctor if you are experiencing discomfort or problems with your vision after viewing the eclipse.
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