From the Heart: Hop on the bus, Gus! (And everybody else, too!)

Friday, May 28, 2021 | Vol. 2, No. 5

Ready to roll

Anybody else notice the sun shining a little more brightly? The birds chirping with more enthusiasm? The termites swarming with just a little more verve?

Sure, part of it might be because it's springtime in South Louisiana, but the continuing decline of COVID numbers in our community, and the subsequent loosening of restrictions, seems to have put a little pep in everyone’s step.

As you get out and about following the winter of COVID, one thing to watch for is our Be Well Bus, a brand-spanking-new, 40-foot motorcoach tricked out with a wealth of community health screening tools.

We’ll be hitting the road with it as fairs, festivals and other public gatherings return to the calendar, all in the hopes of helping our Northshore neighbors live their healthiest post-COVID lives.

Read more about the Be Well Bus at StTammany.health, and if you see it in the community, stop in and say hello – and to soak up the soul-restoring air-conditioning.

Now, more than ever, we can’t wait to see you.

Community checkup with Joan Coffman

With COVID numbers in our community continuing to decline – even hitting zero at STHS on Thursday (May 27) for only the second time since the start of the pandemic – St. Tammany Health System is getting back to business. Listen as President and CEO Joan Coffman offers a rundown of some of the exciting things happening in our healing halls.

‘That was a total God thing’

Quick thinking by a St. Tammany Health System nurse anesthetist, along with a lot of luck and perhaps a little divine intervention, helped save the life of a Madisonville school bus driver who suffered a medical emergency earlier this month while driving a bus full of elementary school children.

“That was a total God thing,” Parker Ellis said a day after the event. “There’s a whole bunch of different factors that, if any one of them would have gone differently, it really would have been a tragedy.”

Read the full story

Puppies!

It was a dog day afternoon recently at STHS – but in the most cuddly way possible. To close out Nurses Week 2021, the health system invited the group Love on a Leash, which specializes in “pet-provided therapy,” to share its brand of furry, four-legged comfort with the health system’s colleagues.

See the adorable photos

Special delivery

For the second year in a row, COVID-19 concerns prompted Madisonville OB/GYN Dr. Gary Agena to cancel his annual benefit crawfish cookoff. So, for the second year in a row, he decided instead to cook up 1,500 pounds of crawfish to hand out free to St. Tammany Health System colleagues.

5 tips to ease visits to the pediatrician

Despite the bright decorations and cheerful staff, a visit to the pediatrician’s office can be stressful for kids, what with all the unfamiliar people and equipment. (Plus: shots!) But there are strategies for easing that anxiety in children, as Juli Chastain of the STHS Parenting Center explains in her latest parenting column.

Simply the best

STHS has earned a five-star rating from the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services, reflecting the health system’s treatment of heart attacks and pneumonia, as well as its readmission rates and patient safety. It is the only hospital in the New Orleans area to receive five stars and one of only six in Louisiana.

St. Tammany Health System