February 2021

Milwaukee VA SCI Center

By Dr. Ken Lee

As we all endured the COVID-19 pandemic, we had to find ways to continue taking care of our patients despite the challenges.

The Milwaukee VA SCI Center was no exception. With the restriction of shutdown as well as a gradual limited return to face-to-face interaction, the staff had to find ways to connect with our SCI veterans and continue care. As with all other medical facilities at this time, a virtual clinic was the answer. VA Video Connect (VVC) has been around for some time, and our SCI Center has been utilizing this for many years. However, the pandemic put a turbo charge on this technology to accomplish a national directive: completing comprehensive annual exams for all SCI veterans.

Milwaukee VA SCI is set up as a Patient Aligned Care Team (PACT). This means that our SCI veterans are assigned to a PACT that consists of a physician, nurse practitioner, social worker (case manager), psychologist, dietician, and staff in other disciplines. The teams follow their panel as lifelong care to include rehab, outpatient, and inpatient. They provide comprehensive primary care and preventative care, which includes the SCI specialty care.

We have 3 PACT groups: Packers (Green) team, Badger (Red) team, and Brewers (Blue) team. The development of the names were simple. Initially we designated each team as Team One, Two, and Three; but this was met with complaints from our veterans such as why they were in Team Two rather than Team One. In response, we came up with the sports team names from around Wisconsin. Our CPRS (eMR) has these designations for the team, and yes, it was approved.

The Milwaukee VA SCI Center has had continued success with meeting the directive and attaining a high rate of annual exams at 90-95%. We always took pride in ourselves as we continued to achieve this high rate along with 25 other SCI Centers across the country. The pandemic was a challenge to sustain this goal. However, all three PACTs put their thinking caps on and revamped the process while still including all the elements of the annual exam criteria and capitalizing on the VVC. At the end of the 2020 Fiscal Year, our national data showed that the Milwaukee VA SCI Center achieved 74% for annual exam completion, highest in the nation with the close second being Boston SCI Center at 70% (my mentor and predecessor, Dr. Sunil Sabharwal’s program).  It is not a competition, but sure feels good that the Milwaukee SCI Team continues to strive to be the best despite the pandemic challenges.

                     Dr. Denis Castillo with Telehealth Nurse in rehab video team conference

• Congratulations to the following housestaff who matched into Fellowships:
  - Charlotte Ball, MD - Spinal Cord Injury - MCW
  - Nick Donohue, MD - Pain Medicine - MCW
  - Ahmed El-Sayed, MD - Sports Medicine - University of Washington
  - Michael Harper, MD - Sports Medicine - NYP Hospital - Weil Cornell Medical Center
  - Jacob Kastner, MD - Sports Medicine - University of Maryland
  - Nick Wilcox, MD - Sports Medicine - John Peter Smith Hospital, Texas

• Covid-19 vaccinations underway. There is light ahead!

• FH & MCW Post-Covid Multidisciplinary Clinic opened during the last week of January. Many thanks to Drs. Park and Beddows for their participation in planning this clinic.

• Pain and SpineCare Tosa clinic open

• Congratulations to the Froedtert Rehab Clinic for their outstanding CG-CAHPS scores (CG-CAPHS = clinicians & groups consumer assessment of healthcare, provider and systems)

• Congratulations to Dr. Durand and colleagues for their abstract "Vastus Lateralis Oxygen Consumption During a Graded Exercise Test in Chronic Stroke Survivors" being selected for presentation as a virtual poster at the International Stroke Conference in March 2021 

• The FH Neuroscience Institute / Rehab Medicine Clinic is now open

• Congratulations to Dr. Del Toro for his appearance on the Word on Medicine podcast on "New Strategies for Chronic Pain in Amputees"

• Congratulations Dr. Jake Kastner and family on welcoming Lucas Levi on November 23, 2020, weighing 6 pounds, 9 ounces; length was 18.5 inches

• Dr. Carrie Miller married her high school sweetheart, Gregory Jones, on New Years Eve 2020. Congratulations to the newlyweds!

• The MCW Common Read How to be an Antiracist authored by Ibram X. Kendi will be scheduled for late this month. Stay tuned for more information.

Have news to share with your PM&R colleagues? We would love to hear from you for our next issue, so please email any recent publications, awards, presentations, shout-outs, pictures, etc. to Beatriz Envila at benvila@mcw.edu.

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