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Laura C. Medical Professional

Program Staffing

Just wondering how other programs are structured in terms of staff support...

1. How many patients are you currently managing?

2. How many RN's/NP's/Perfusionists do you have?

3. If you have NP's, what is their role? (We are hiring an NP but have never had one in our program as a VAD Coord. before)

Our program currently has close to 70 patients with 3 VAD Coord. RN's (looking to hire an NP) and 2 research coordinators.

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Anonymous

We have 73 on support currently but I would anticipate that number will be near 85 by the end of the year. This is what we have currently:

2 HF physicians who manage all of HF and MCS

2 NPs who do the same as above

1 PA

1 RN MCS Manager who functions about 3/4 time as a coordinator

3 RN MCS Coordinators

1 RN Referral Coordinor who functions about 1/4 time as MCS Coordinator and does all MCS and Heart transplant evals

1 RN MCS Educator who functions 1/2 in MCS and other 1/2 as heart tx nurse manager

4 bioengineers

We also have a research department that does the research end of things.

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Lauren P.

We have approx 45 ppl living with their VADs currently. We have approx 250 living heart transplant patients that we follow for their lifetime. We just merged from two separate teams to one large team. We have:

5 RN MCS/Transplant Coordinators

1 PA MCS/Transplant Coordinator

3 MCS MD's (Intensivists--manage pts from ICU to clinic)

4 CHF MD's who manage transplant pts and refer VAD pts/share in clinic care

4 NPs who manage care only in the ICU postop

A team of biomedical personnel who do the yearly checks & equip eval

As a combined MCS & Transplant team, we rotate our duties each week: MCS Inpatient, MCS Outpatient, MCS Triage/Education, TX Annuals/Biopsies, TX Donor calls/inpatient, TX Triage.

We are still figuring out how to maintain continuity while having a combined team, but it is nice to stay with a heart failure patient throughout the spectrum of their care.