Gundersen Envision is undertaking a lighting project unlike any other it’s pursued, and it’s gaining the attention of one of the country’s most prestigious universities.
In February, new lighting will be installed in patient areas in the La Crosse Inpatient Behavioral Health (IBH) building, not with the goal of saving energy and money (though it will to some degree), but to improve the health outcomes for those receiving treatment there. According to Envision Director Alan Eber, this is the first project in Envision’s 15 years that focuses squarely on patient outcomes and community health, as opposed to leading with energy efficiency and cost savings goals.
“We have a mission to reduce healthcare costs and improve community health,” Eber says. “This the first time were leading with the second versus the first.”
Lightbulb moment
Envision has been working with Illumalife for decades, and because of that relationship, Gundersen was one of the first organizations the lighting company introduced a new technology to that “helps to align a person’s circadian rhythms to the more natural process of the day,” according to Jesse Beckendorf, the Envision project manager in charge of the venture.
According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, circadian rhythms prepare the body for expected changes in the environment and for things we do daily, like eating and sleeping. Artificial light plays a role in influencing these rhythms.
“Through Envision, we always look for energy opportunities, so we started looking at Inpatient Behavioral Health,” Eber says. “We did find some energy opportunity, but as we were touring the building, we saw there was a bigger potential there to help the patients inside that space.”
Beckendorf and his team are working on finalizing the design of the new system in the IBH building. In staff areas, light in the blue spectrum will be key to assisting in the reduction of errors, especially overnight when patient-area lights are dimmed. And in those patient areas, the goal is to mimic outdoor light that changes with the passing hours.
“These patients are inside almost all day, so if you just mimic the blue sky, that’s where this comes in on the patient side,” Beckendorf says.
Behavioral Health was a natural place to consider for this kind of project, Eber says. Envision needed to partner with a department where patients stay more than one night so that enough data was available to draw conclusions. It also needed patients who could benefit from the changes.
Harvard shows interest
The work on the La Crosse Campus has captured the attention of researchers at Harvard University, who are interested in partnering with Gundersen to study the data obtained through the lighting change.
“Patients in IBH are admitted for many reasons and have varying lengths of stay. Some patients come in with dysregulated moods and are in crisis, which sometimes can lead to safety events for patients and staff,” says Carly Klunder, BSN, clinical manager of the IBH unit. “We are excited to add this lighting project as another intervention to get patients back to a healthy wake/sleep cycle and to see how it impacts many aspects of their illness and recovery.”
And this project has Eber and others with Envision excited about what their work could mean for the future of patient care in the organization. He’s already had inquiries from other departments with similar patient populations who are interested in learning more about how a project like this could be beneficial.
“(This project) will be a catalyst for that, and it may be a catalyst for the industry in general, for behavioral health in general,” Eber says. “If this shows that we can reduce stays inside of inpatient behavioral health, this is going to be huge.”