Often the nature of my work in patient experience calls upon me to reflect about my own experiences as a patient and what the difference was from the experiences that I felt like they truly care for me and understood my needs versus those experiences that made me feel insignificant and without a say.
Data. It’s a word often used in healthcare to back-up our findings, justify our next steps, or in some cases lead us to a new conclusion. While we live in a world of big data, we may not intuitively know how to use this effectively to create change. In fact, only 15% of healthcare organizations in a recent Tableau IDC whitepaper are data leading. Data leading organizations are those with strong...
Successful integration of standard processes and lean methodologies provide a strong basis for personalized patient care at Wellstar Paulding Hospital, but data-driven excellence requires ongoing evaluation and improvement efforts to maintain and exceed prior performance. With their eye on the Baldrige Award for Healthcare, Wellstar Paulding Hospital knew that their current digital rounding...
My early nursing career offered me a variety of care areas and work settings. Shortly after graduating with my BSN, I began my nursing career in Labor & Delivery at a hospital in downtown Omaha. While not as notorious as some other inner-city facilities in the country, it was a reality check and an often-stressful setting for a ‘farm-girl’ from rural Nebraska. My eyes were quickly opened by the...
Quality, Safety and Service, How They Stack Up The Academy of Medicine (previously known as the Institute of Medicine) defines health care quality as "the degree to which health care services for individuals and populations increase the likelihood of desired health outcomes and are consistent with current professional knowledge.1" Over 20 years ago, the Academy identified six key aims to improve...
If you’ve worked in healthcare for any length of time you’ve probably heard the saying “no margin, no mission.” As a nursing leader, I had to learn terms like EBIDA, productive versus non-productive hours, fixed assets, expense variances, and the intricacies of tax accountability for regular payroll versus bonus hours. Advancing up the leadership ladder took me further away from my undergraduate...
