Since President and CEO Joanne Marqusee arrived three years ago, Cooley Dickinson Health Care has been conducting surveys and holding focus groups to gauge patient needs. Two recent initiatives are among changes that show it is responding effectively to that feedback.
Hearing that the area’s substantial LGBTQ community believed that the hospital should be more in tune with its needs, Cooley Dickinson has hired a health care practitioner who holds a master’s degree in nursing with a specialization in transgender and LGBTQ health. Jennifer Aleah Nesteby’s job is to see patients at Northampton Family Practice on Atwood Drive, ensure that accurate information is recorded about them and connect with LGBTQ hospital staff to see that they are satisfied with their workplace environment.
Meanwhile, work is underway to address dissatisfaction with the cramped quarters where mammograms are done. The hospital says its state-of-the art equipment for diagnosis and treatment of breast cancer — including 3-D mammography — has been praised, but where it is housed leaves something to be desired. On its web page, the hospital notes “our breast care services have not been in the best of spaces and are spread out in the hospital.”
To address that, the hospital is spending $2.5 million to renovate an area in the main building that will be 2½ times the size of the current space. The Comprehensive Breast Center, expected to open in June, will offer patients a multidisciplinary approach to breast health and care, the hospital says, with services including breast examination, screening, diagnostic imaging, biopsy and ultrasound. The 6,280-square-foot area will also include a section designated for bone density testing.
Patients will have more comfortable waiting areas and more spacious exam rooms and changing areas — a big improvement over the tiny, curtained rooms used now. And a patient navigator — someone to help those with breast cancer through a maze of decisions — will add to the staff.
The hospital says that breast cancer comprises 28 percent of all the cancers diagnosed or treated at Cooley Dickinson, and it affects 49 percent of women and 2 percent of men treated for cancer at the hospital. That, added to the large number of patients flowing in and out of the mammogram rooms for routine screenings, means a lot of people will benefit from this improvement.
The goal of bettering the health-care experience for patients is also behind the move to hire Nesteby as director of LGBTQ services.
She grew up in California and, after college, worked in various public health positions in San Francisco, where she observed the problems LGBTQ people faced when seeking health care. Not only was it hard for them to find practitioners familiar with their particular medical needs, she says, but some found it difficult to find doctors who would even see them.
That turned her medical focus to transgender issues and, more broadly, LGBTQ health.
Nesteby, who identifies as queer, a term that recognizes that gender and sexual identities can be fluid, says some LGBTQ people fail to seek health care because of a fear of being stigmatized in a doctor’s office. She hopes to remove that worry for patients.
And, Nesteby says, providing patients the respect of using names and gender pronouns that may have changed during their lives is important in order to provide them with proper care.
With is affiliation with Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston, Cooley Dickinson points out that patients here benefit from the resources of a world-class medical center. With these latest moves, CDH demonstrates that personal comfort and care are also a priority for this community hospital.