What A Typical Day Looks Like For Summer Bell, NP, Clinical Director At Local Infusion

From creating new policies to fielding questions from the nurses and training all new hires.

When Summer Bell joined Local Infusion in May of 2023, she was working in the Bedford, New Hampshire center as an infusion Nurse Practitioner — a job that was much different from her prior experience in the emergency room.

“The ER is, as you can imagine, very stressful, very high acuity, very long hours,” explains Summer. “You’re there probably 13 hours a day on top of your driving time there and back. I started at Local Infusion as a per diem NP but found that I really enjoyed being able to see the patients on a regular basis and helping them work towards something. When you see a patient in the ER, it’s their worst day. And at an infusion center, it may not be their best day, but they’re in higher spirits than what I was used to in the ER.”  

After 8 months in the full-time infusion role, Summer was promoted to Clinical Director charged with overseeing all clinical aspects of every center. This encompasses everything from creating new policies to fielding questions from the nurses and training all new hires. It’s a role that has Summer working part of the time from home — she’s based in Manchester, New Hampshire, just a five-minute drive from the Bedford center — and part of the time at the infusion centers.

We caught up with Summer to learn more about what drew her to Local Infusion and what a typical day looks like for her. 

Local Infusion prides itself on doing things differently and upending the “status quo.” What does this look like for you? 

Local Infusion puts the patients and their offices first. I’m sure if you talk to any of our clinicians, they’ll probably say the same thing — that we take the burden off of the referring office by handling the insurance aspect. At other infusion centers, the referring office has to do all the background insurance work.  

Not only that, but we also do a really good job as clinicians to make sure that we’re following up on patient care. We keep up on their symptom progression as well as any follow-up protocols like lab work, MRIs, or CAT scans. The goal is to make sure that their medication is actually working and we’re not just infusing them. We then report back to their referring office instead of just infusing and then leaving for the night and forgetting that patient until the next time they come. It’s truly a full experience from start to finish. 

One of the most-asked questions for new patients is… I have small veins, so I could be a “hard stick.” How do you think about this when training new hires? 

All of our clinicians have to come in with IV experience, but when I’m doing training, I go through a process where I make sure that they can get IVs on the first try. Because nobody wants to be stuck multiple times.

When I’m interviewing, I also ask a lot of questions about how comfortable candidates feel working autonomously with IVs, mixing medications, etc to ensure we get the right candidates. 

The last time I audited, there was a 97% success rate for first-time sticks. 

What does a typical day look like for you at Local Infusion? 

On a typical day where I’m working from home, I’ll log in to my computer and go through chart audits for all of our centers. I personally call every Medicare patient that comes into our New Hampshire centers to establish care, ensure their allergies and medications are in our system, and see if they have questions for us (there are other clinicians who do this for Maine and Connecticut). 

Aside from that, I typically have one or two big projects going on at a time, whether that’s updating our policies or training guidelines. I’m always trying to find new ways to make things easier and more streamlined for our training processes and clinicians. I’m also answering a lot of phone calls and messages all day long from our clinical staff, whether it’s about an existing patient or someone looking to get scheduled. 

Every quarter, I travel to each one of the sites and do a visit to make sure the clinicians know I’m there for them. During this time, I can answer any questions in-person and discuss clinical issues that have come up. 

When we open a new center I am physically going to these new centers to train the new clinical staff hands-on. 

What excites you the most about working at Local Infusion? 

I think we’re in a great spot because a lot of insurance companies are, for lack of a better word, forcing patients to transition out of hospital infusion centers to standalone ones because of the fact that hospitals upcharge them so much. So we’re actually running into a lot of patients who come into the office and might be a little hesitant at first because their insurance company is making them switch, but then we win them over. 

The more offices that we can open — especially in rural areas — the better. We’re very well-positioned to pick up the slack and exceed expectations to provide the best patient experience possible. 

READ MORE: At Local Infusion, The Patient, Payor, & Provider All Win. Here’s How.