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Healthcare Journal of Baton ROuge I MAY / JUN 2017 15
the hospital, there were maybe four doctors
that would show up at the meeting. And I
just thought, “Huh, there’s got to be more
involvement than this!”What I was able to
do when I was Chief of Staff, I was able to
increase it.And the way that I did that, I took
attendance. If they didn’t show up or didn’t
show interest or didn’t participate, I kind
of weeded them off. At this point we have
15 physician members at large, we have 6
officers, and we have 5 ad-hoc members. So
nowwe’re a very involved, vibrant commu-
nity that’s really responsive. The young doc-
tors are sometimes hard to get into leader-
ship roles because they’re busy, they are kind
of learning how to practice, they are not sure
what they want to do. But you kind of have
to pick those out—you need to identify those
physicians, typically younger ones, that you
think already have an interest in the lead-
ership role.
The General also has a GME program. We
have an internal medicine residency. They
rotate through here and they go to some of
the committee meetings, they learn from
that, and there is a lot of teaching involved.
I think it kind of challenges the staff and also
hopefully some of these physicians, the bet-
ter ones, will stay in the system.
Editor From the leadership perspective,
how can you encourage teamwork among
all the staff in the OR, not just the phy-
sicians? How does that typically work, in
practice?
Olinde The way the operating roomworks,
we have a Chief of Nursing, Monica Nijoka,
she has to have the appropriate nurses. It’s
very important. The OR has to run very
smoothly, so you need good circulating
nurses; nurses that power up between, that
work in each operating room, basically.
They get equipment, they get medication,
they take orders. And you have to have a
very good scrub tech, a technician that will
actually operate with the surgeon and the
instruments. So, the nursing is very impor-
tant from that aspect. Some nurses you put
in certain specialties—you might want to
have a nurse that only does orthopedics or
only does have four surgeons in
my group and we have our own scrub techs
that we employ through the Baton Rouge
General, which is subsidized basically, and
they do a great job. They know exactly what
I want for every procedure that I do. I don’t
have to worry about not having what I need.
Also, anesthesia is very important. Now
the Chief of Anesthesia, his job is to make
sure that everything is safe, that these
patients that are operated on have a good
pre-op clearance, medical clearance for the
procedure, make sure they are induced from
the sleep safely. They follow a protocol. That
is very important.
I mentioned turnaround; it’s really impor-
tant. You have to get the patient out, clean
the room, and complete changeover.That’s a
lot to ask. That’s very important time that we
lose. So, it has to be an organized machine
for things to go smoothly. The nurses are
probably there for 5:30 in the morning and
we tend to go to probably 6:00 at night.
Editor You kind of touched on this briefly,
but maybe you could talk about how
financing models have changed the pro-
cess of an OR and how that gets handled
from a leadership perspective.
OlindeI think the most difficult thing right
now has to do with reform and the Afford-
able Care Act, Trump reform, that type of
thing. We don’t knowwhere things are going,
but what’s changed lately for us, particularly
in my practice and also the hospital, is that
nowadays we basically have to preauthorize
every case that we do. Whereas before they
were a lot more relaxed with that, now they
have got to be preauthorized or they can’t
go to surgery. With almost every insurance
carrier, that’s required. We have to actually
“You have to be sure
turnaround times are quick.
Baton Rouge General has
15 operating rooms andwe
have to turn these rooms
quickly so that surgeons
get their work done.”
Photo courtesy of Baton Rouge General Medical Center