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RESEARCH

As the Medical Director of Research for Our Lady of the Lake Regional Medical Center, Bud O’Neal leads all research efforts on the Baton Rouge campus in conjunction with Chris Thomas with attention to development of investigator initiated trials and inclusion into multi-center national clinical trials.

The major focus of research at CIRQLE surrounds the investigation of the host response to infection. Since 2014, CIRQLE has evaluated the role of early diagnostics in sepsis treatment including evaluation during the early COVID-19 pandemic. A significant research focus has been on the early detection of sepsis using microfluidics in a series of studies under the umbrella of SQuISH (Solving the Question of Inflammation or Sepsis Hastily). Research teams including residents have presented at national and international conferences. Through the success of trial enrollment in national investigations such as PASSITON and MENDS2, CIRQLE has established the partnership of LSUHSC-Baton Rouge and Our Lady of the Lake Regional Medical Center as a developing hub for clinical trial development and performance.

As Medical Director of System Quality and Patient Safety for Franciscan Missionaries of Our Lady Health System and Chief Quality Officer at Our Lady of the Lake Regional Medical Center, Chris Thomas leads quality initiatives at the Baton Rouge Campus. Critical to success is daily partnership with the region’s premier Department of Quality, Patient Safety, and Performance Improvement at OLOLRMC led by Christi Pierce and LeaAnn Teague, along with additional institutional navigation from Katie O'Neal.

Quality in healthcare is defined by the patient centered results achieved through application of evidence based medicine creating a consistent reduction in unnecessary clinical variability. This process requires a dedicated commitment to performance improvement, interdisciplinary transparency, and an enhanced structure in patient safety to identify pertinent opportunities. The major focus of quality at CIRQLE involves the improvement of patient outcomes through creation of patient centered clinical themes. CIRQLE focuses on the harms created by hospital immobility, protection from the development of inpatient sepsis via iterative investigation of bloodstream sterility at all points of patient access, and the use of national databases, research trials, and benchmarks to evaluate actual performance. Efforts led by residents in collaborative teams have been presented at national conferences including reduction in blood culture contamination, integration of academic providers into daily mobility efforts, and evaluation of the potential harms of electronic alerting systems in sepsis identification. CIRQLE will continue to collaborate with national leaders in best practice and is quickly becoming a leader in the approach to healthcare quality.

Physician Leadership is a unique skill that is underrepresented nationally and requires both recognized expertise as well as formative experiences and training to assist younger clinicians. Katie O’Neal and Serena Auñón-Chancellor lead the center’s focus on physician development.

Katie O’Neal is the Chief Medical Officer for Our Lady of the Lake Regional Medical Center and Chief Medical Advisor for the Southeastern Conference. She is a national expert on the creation of systems and structures necessary for safe care delivery in hospitals and safe plan in sports during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Serena Auñón-Chancellor is an international expert on leadership, culture, and safety culture. Through her experience as a NASA astronaut with experience as the flight engineer for Expedition 56/57 on the International Space Station, she has created a leadership series taught to learners at the Baton Rouge Campus.

Leadership highlights in the CIRQLE

NEJM Podcast with Serena Auñón-Chancellor, published Jan 2023

Sports Illustrated showcases Katie O’Neal's role in the 2020 SEC Football season

Serena Auñón-Chancellor as the keynote speaker for the 2019 ISS R&D Conference

Bud O'Neal assisting Steph Cormier and Rebecca Christofferson scratch-build a COVID testing lab at the beginning of the pandemic

Bud O'Neal improving healthcare and tackling sepsis

Clinical Intelligence is computer enabled analytics, methods, processes, and discipline of extracting and transforming raw clinical data into meaningful insight, new discovery, and knowledge that helps make more effective clinical healthcare decisions. — PK Ghavami, Clinical Intelligence: The Big Data Analytics Revolution in Healthcare, 2014

Tonya Jagneaux leads the group analytics revolution locally with assistance from Bud O'Neal. Analytics is the consolidation of clinical analytical data to inform decision making in healthcare. With the informed analytics, clinical data can be used to decipher opportunities in quality, safety, research, operational efficiencies, and better patient experience. Current projects in clinical intelligence and analytics include predictive analytics for sepsis management and inpatient deterioration, and collaboration with Duke and LSUHSC-NOLA with a predictive tool for preexposure prophylaxis therapy in Emergency Departments for HIV prevention. Workspaces for analytical opportunities include Reporting Workbench and SlicerDicer in Epic, interpretation of clinical performance in our benchmarked database Vizient, and broader scale understanding of clinical data utilizing national clinical registries and the Epic data warehouses, Clarity and Caboodle.

Equity in health care is when every person has the opportunity to attain their full potential of health; and no one is disadvantaged from attaining this potential due to their race/ethnicity, age, gender identity, sexual orientation, nationality, socioeconomic status, or geographical background. See HEALTH AFFAIRS for more information.

The CIRQLE recognizes Equity as a pillar of structure in the mission of excellence. Discovery in medicine for better prescription and delivery of healthcare to our patients begins with the understanding of precisely how to help every individual achieve a lifestyle and pathway to health and wellness. Differences in race, culture, environmental influences, and opportunities impact the journey to health, or hasten the path to chronic illness and decline. Our alliance incorporates the pursuit of Equity in every aspect of research, quality, education, and leadership opportunities.

Our collaboration with Our Lady of Lake Regional Medical Center and the parent system, Franciscan Missionaries of Our Lady, facilitates a health-system wide, multi-state approach of capturing and addressing the Social Determinants of Health for our patients and our team members as our First Community. The project team is multidisciplinary and diverse, with much of the team representing also the Diversity, Equity, & Inclusion leadership structure within the health system.

Equity, while featured as a sector within in the CIRQLE’s composition, truly exists as an integrated foundation for all efforts and objectives of this collaborative.

The Center for Integrated Research, Quality, Leadership, anaLytics, and Equity in Baton Rouge

The CIRQLE was created in response to needs created by the COVID-19 pandemic in an effort to accelerate the connection between research and timely integration into evidence-based practice. With an active partnership with Our Lady of the Lake Regional Medical Center and Franciscan Missionaries of Our Lady Health System, our members are committed to implementation of investigator-initiated novel diagnostics, researching available analytics for optimal implementation, and collaboration with national partners in initiating clinical best practice.

Through collaborative efforts, the CIRQLE has developed and participated in multi-center national and international clinical trials. Our mission is to enhance patient-centered clinical outcomes in sepsis care, educate future physician leaders on the importance of an integrated research and quality interface, and optimize clinical intelligence through utilization of analytics. Core to its mission is the desire to create equitable disease outcomes through an iterative evaluation of social determinants of health.

FDA Clears Cytovale's® IntelliSep® sepsis test

Sepsis Alliance Presentation 2022

Sepsis Alliance Presentation -- Dr. Thomas

Dr. Dan Burgin presenting at CHEST 2022

Dr. Bud O'Neal presenting at CHEST 2022

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