Inova Fairfax Hospital


Inova Fairfax Medical Campus is the largest hospital campus in Northern Virginia and the flagship hospital of Inova Health System. Located in Woodburn in Fairfax County, Virginia, Inova Fairfax Hospital is one of the largest employers in the County. Inova Fairfax Hospital is also home to a neonatal intensive care unit, and a dedicated pediatrics intensive care unit, an oncology unit, an adolescent medicine unit, and centers for cardiac surgery and pediatric surgery.
The Inova Fairfax "Hospital" can be more accurately described as a campus encompassing three hospitals; "Inova Fairfax Hospital," which includes the original building, the "Inova Children's Hospital," and the Inova Heart and Vascular Institute."

Capability

Inova Fairfax Hospital is a 923-bed tertiary care hospital campus providing most medical and surgical specialties and houses Northern Virginia's only Level 1 Trauma Center and the nation's fifth-busiest obstetrics program. It is one of only six community hospitals in the nation offering the full spectrum of organ transplantation. It has been named among the top 50 hospitals for gastrointestinal disorders, gynecology, and heart surgery by U.S. News & World Report.
In 2016, Inova Fairfax and University of Virginia Health System announced a partnership involving a $112 million research institute and a University of Virginia School of Medicine regional campus at Inova. The plan involves developing a Global Genomics and Bioinformatics Research Institute at the Inova Center for Personalized Health, which will be funded by UVA, Inova, and the Virginia General Assembly. They also intend to collaborate on research between the Inova Schar Cancer Institute and the University of Virginia Cancer Research Center.
Inova Fairfax Hospital is also a satellite clinical campus for students from Virginia Commonwealth University's School of Medicine and the University of Virginia School of Medicine and hosts residents from other universities in the area. The hospital also houses the Virginia Commonwealth University School of Pharmacy’s Inova Campus in which students can complete their third and fourth years of training.

Layoffs

On September 29, 2011, it was announced that Inova will outsource and layoff 606 jobs. Environmental Service, Laundry, and Teleservices were the departments affected. On about February 17, 2012, it was announced that Inova will outsource and layoff an unknown number of employees. Safety and Security, Patient Transport, and Medical Records were among the departments affected.
The following were statistics at the end of the year ending June 30, 2009:
In early 2020, hospitals across the country, including Inova Fairfax hospital began preparations for anticipated mass influx critically ill patients affected by the COVID-19 pandemic.
Some of the most notable responses included attempts to stock up and ration medical equipment, notably personal protective equipment and mechanical ventilators, the termination of all elective surgical procedures, cross training clinical staff to operate in the Intensive Care Unit and the reallocation of certain clinical services to bolster those under more stress. For example, Physical Therapy services were drawn back initially and Technicians were cross-trained and staffed to bolster Respiratory Therapist teams. In "the Towers" the medical surgical intermediate care unit was outfitted to accommodate the increased census of critically ill, intubated patients and much of the staff was cross-trained to work to meet ICU goals of care. The Team nursing model was introduced to various units throughout the hospital in anticipation of higher acuity needs.
Physical changes made to individual units included the conversion of almost all patient rooms to negative pressure isolation. Certain circumstances causing aerosolized viral droplets need to be treated as airborne. The standard isolation of which is a negative pressure isolated room with appropriate PPE for enclosed staff..
Other procedural changes instituted by the campus were the creation of designated staff entrances by restricting building access to specific places and the near termination of all non-patient visitors to the hospital. This was especially difficult to loved ones who could not be allowed to see their family in person. From the perspective of at least one healthcare worker it was even more saddening since many acutely ill patients were middle age with young children.
Patient Census
An interesting observable change noted in the early days of the pandemic is the effect on hospital-wide patient acuity and census. Since the Virginia executive lockdown in early March, 2020, the number of patients in the hospital appeared to plummet. This could conjecturally be attributed to the pause on elective surgeries and decrease in number of people seeking help. However, over the next few weeks, the number of critically ill patients could be observed in individual ICU units to rise steadily. It can be argued that the Medical Surgical ICU of Fairfax Hospital bore the brunt of the critically ill COVID Pneumonia patients. Continuous efforts were made to restrict COVID-19 suspected/infected patients to specific areas of the hospital, for the protection of immunocompromised populations.

Awards

The hospital has received numerous other awards as well.

Hospital rating data

The HealthGrades website contains the clinical quality data for Inova Fairfax Hospital, as of 2017. For this rating section three different types of data from HealthGrades are presented: clinical quality ratings for thirty-eight inpatient conditions and procedures, thirteen patient safety indicators and the percentage of patients giving the hospital as a 9 or 10.
For inpatient conditions and procedures, there are three possible ratings: worse than expected, as expected, better than expected. For this hospital the data for this category is:
For patient safety indicators, there are the same three possible ratings. For this hospital safety indicators were rated as:
Percentage of patients rating this hospital as a 9 or 10 - 76%
Percentage of patients who on average rank hospitals as a 9 or 10 - 69%