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LAKEWOOD, NJ, March 30,
2007
— As respiratory therapy supervisor at Specialty Hospital at Kimball,
David Orloff’s major mission is to help patients on ventilators regain the
ability to breathe on their own. “The smaller, personalized health care setting of each Specialty Hospital offers the ideal environment for our respiratory therapists to concentrate on the specific needs of ventilator patients, taking into consideration that many are recovering from a wide range of medical conditions,” says Orloff, whose clinical work was recently presented at the AARC’s 52nd Annual International Respiratory Congress in Las Vegas and published in the November 2006 issue of Respiratory Care, the scientific journal of AARC, which represents more than 35,000 respiratory therapists and |
 Specialty Hospital at Kimball respiratory therapy supervisor David Orloff visits with patient Lionel Gaylard of Allentown. Under Specialty Hospital’s innovative and individualized approach to ventilator care, the 71-year-old was successfully able to breathe on his own within seven days of his arrival to Specialty Hospital. Orloff, a resident of Howell who has championed the effort at Specialty Hospital, recently earned national recognition for his clinical work in helping patients break free from ventilation dependence during their extended hospital stays. If you would like to have this photo e-mailed to you, please e-mail Cathy Goetz at fran5238@aol.com or call her at 732-681-8477. |
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educators nationwide. He also authored a guest
editorial on his research that was featured in the February 2007 issue of RT for Decision Making in Respiratory Care
magazine. Both 25-bed Specialty Hospitals are state-licensed “hospital-within-a-hospital” facilities situated within Lakewood-based Kimball Medical Center and Long Branch-based Monmouth Medical Center that are operated by AcuteCare Health System of Lakewood, considered the region’s leading independent provider of hospital-based, long term acute care services. According to Orloff, the winning formula for ventilation freedom — a weaning process he calls “mechanical ventilation liberation” — has three key ingredients: successful collaboration among each Specialty Hospital’s own respiratory team, staff of full-time physicians and attending pulmonologists, the experience of its respiratory therapists to make bedside decisions and the utilization of a state-of-the-art carbon dioxide monitoring device. “Because we have a high respiratory therapist-per-patient ratio, we can devote more time to assess patient conditions and work one on one with those experiencing the most difficulty in being weaned from ventilators,” Orloff says, referring to patients in respiratory failure, those who have failed at several attempts at ventilation weaning and those who have undergone tracheostomy — the creation of an opening through the neck into the windpipe. Instead of breathing through the nose and mouth, a tube is placed in this opening to provide a passage for air and the removal of secretions from the lungs. “Breath by breath and step by step, we literally are breathing new life into the recovery of these patients so that they can achieve their highest level of pulmonary function,” he explains. “This is particularly essential since many of our patients are diagnosed with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) and other serious respiratory conditions.” In addition, most of Specialty Hospitals’ respiratory therapists have more than 10 years of experience in their profession — “a level of expertise that make them uniquely qualified to make bedside decisions in partnership with our physicians,” says Orloff, who worked extensively in several Central Jersey acute care hospitals before joining Specialty Hospital at Kimball upon its opening in 2005. These respiratory therapists are specially trained to use an advanced cardiopulmonary management system — the third contributing factor to mechanical ventilation liberation — that tracks pulmonary progress without the need for a blood sample. “This cardiac output monitor provides the therapist with a noninvasive look at how well a patient is doing in the weaning process by measuring carbon dioxide concentration levels during breathing,” Orloff explains. The success of Specialty Hospital’s ventilation weaning efforts has resulted in a significant 39 percent decrease in ventilator days — an average of seven days per patient, according to Hilary Michaels, executive director of Specialty Hospital at Kimball. “The strides we have made through our ground-breaking weaning protocols serve as a testament to our well-planned, aggressive and integrated program of medical and therapeutic care,” she says. “Every time we can take a patient off a ventilator, it’s a proud moment for our entire multidisciplinary team since it is such a critical step in a patient’s recovery. We truly believe that treating the whole person — not just the conditions that brought them here — is essential to optimum healing and health.” ### AcuteCare Health System, LLC, is a privately owned corporation formed in 2002 to establish and manage long term acute care hospitals (LTACHs). An LTACH (pronounced L-tack) provides diagnostic and medical treatment and rehabilitation to patients whose conditions are medically complex and require an average length-of-stay of 25 days or more. Although ACHS’s Specialty Hospital at Monmouth and Specialty Hospital at Kimball are located within major medical centers, they are independent entities that offer the benefits of a smaller, more individualized hospital setting, combined with such life-support services as ventilator weaning, complex wound care, parenteral nutrition, respiratory and cardiac monitoring, and dialysis. Patients typically are referred to the Specialty Hospitals through physician, nurse, case manager or social worker referral — from an intensive care unit. For more information about Specialty Hospital at Monmouth, call 732-923-5037, and Specialty Hospital at Kimball, call 732-942-3597. Visit its Web site at www.acutecarehs.com. |
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