CHRISTUS promotes wellness through coaching, employee outreach
CHAMPS program reaches out to associates to tackle health needs
CHRISTUS St. Vincent Regional Medical Center has been rightfully lauded for its pro-active work in the community helping patients take a wellness approach to their health. It was one of only three hospitals to receive the 2018 NM Quest award from the New Mexico Hospital Association for excellence in quality improvement. It is recognized as a premier honor in hospital quality and performance improvement. The hospital is recognized for its Clinician Directed Performance Improvement (CDPI) program — a novel hospital quality program designed to give practicing physicians, nurses and other clinicians time, support, and training to conduct quality improvement projects of their choosing, according to a news release from the association. The organization also has been doing the same internally for its own employees because sometimes even people who work in the health field need a little help managing their own health, said Kathy Parkhill, a registered nurse, CHRISTUS patient navigator and program director for CHRISTUS Health Associates Making Positive Steps (CHAMPS). “CHAMPS is an associate wellness program,” she said. “We offer services to help the associates of CHRISTUS reach their health goals. I help them navigate the services surrounding their goals.” Frequently health care professionals are so busy helping others that they can overlook their own health, Parkhill said. “When you’re in the middle of it every day, helping other people, it can be hard to take care of yourself,” she said. “And we wanted to make that easier.” At the main campus, there is a walking trail of almost a mile that offers an easy way to get out and move some. It also has a gym that makes it quite convenient for those employees to workout either before or after their shift. “We do an activity around that,” Parkhill said of the walking trail. “We partnered with the American Heart Association and had a Move Day last year. It was just to get people to get out and move for health. We had people on the walking trail and we had a raffle with people got prizes.” Parkhill has made it a point to get out to as many of the different campuses as possible. “I’m a health coach and I meet with people,” she said. “We develop health goals together. I also do navigation services for the associates to make sure they have a primary care doctor and get in to see them or get into a specialist. They may be having difficulty getting that important health screening, trying to preventative services. We have free lab service for preventative measures
like diabetes and high cholesterol.” The program is in its third year and Parkhill said she has seen participation growing every year, with now as many as 1,000 employees across the 26 campuses in northern New Mexico taking part in some way. That includes employees’ families as well. “Participation can be on so many different levels,” she said. “They participate in using the lab, or at a meeting with me.” Outreach with the community is unabated and growing every year, as well, Parkhill said. “We have health fairs and try to about four events a year,” she said. “I try to get to all the different campuses. It’s pretty impressive, we have a lot of clinics. Last month was heart month for February so we passed out a info had free labs cholesterol checks. We went to a number different locations to chat with employees and tell them about our program. Each person got a booboo pack, a jell pack in shape of a heart.” Parkhill said she can see doing another, major summer health fair in the main campus gym. “We had different vendors come in; spin class people came in,” she said. “Representatives from our health insurance were there just in case people had questions about that. We had free glucose testing and had smoking cessation information. We talked about holistic wellness, yoga and focused in on that to connect them with different health resources.” The idea in the long run, Parkhill said, is helping people be healthier to prevent long-term problems that can arise when health is neglected. “If you can prevent something, it’s so much cheaper for everybody in the long run than trying to change it afterwards,” she said.