A Word of Thanks on Doctor's Day

I would like to take a moment to recognize and give thanks to our physicians on this special Doctor's Day! Each day, our dedicated physicians are here to provide treatment to our patients that entrust their lives in our care. Through their tireless years of training and service, our physicians continue to give our patients what they have come to expect of Jewish Hospital and Frazier Rehab - excellence in patient care!

I am always receiving letters and emails from grateful patients that want to share their positive stories with me about their care and I thought this excerpt from one patient summed up how I believe all of us feel about our physicians...

After a particularly long stay in the hospital and fighting numerous complications and conditions, one patient wrote "I have nothing but accolades to give regarding my care and the concern for my family. Your team of physicians are great - they are all to be commended!" I couldn't agree more!

As a hospital administrator, I am blessed to have such a talented team of physicians to work with in leading and growing our hospital. Whether its a minor emergency or a major operation we have the very best doctor's to care of any patient need. To our physicians, I thank you for your passion, your dedication, and your talents in helping to make Jewish Hospital and Frazier Rehab the best hospital in America! Thank YOU!

A Word of Thanks on Doctor's Day

Principal for a Day!

As an ambassador for Jewish Hospital, an important part of my job is to be an actively involved citizen in supporting our community. My involvement ranges from volunteering on various community boards and service projects to helping raise funds and awareness for worthy community initiatives. Fortunately, these are activities that I genuinely enjoy!

On Monday, I had the special privilege to participate as the "Principal for the Day" at Tully Elementary School in Jeffersontown. For the greater part of the day, I was able to help "lead" the Tully Tigers through their daily activities from reciting the Pledge of Allegiance, to recognizing Tully's Terrific Tigers (student awards), to making classroom rounds and reading to students, to talking with a number of the faculty and staff. It was a quite enjoyable experience and I'm certain that I was the true benefactor of the day!



As I walked the halls and visited the classrooms with Dr. John Ansman, the real Prinipal for Tully Elementary, I was amazed at the striking number of similarities that exist between his job and my own (including my being interviewed and having to answer the tough questions from a very inquizative 5th grade class!) Every situation we encountered throughout the day parallels the same issues, challenges, and opportunities that I see each day in the hospital. Dr. Ansman has purview and responsbility over personnel coaching and training, parent communication and interactions, coordination of community volunteers to assist the operations of the school, quality monitoring and planning to ensure high KAT test scores for his school and students, budgeting issues, and political advocacy and awareness within the city and state to name a few. I of course, have ultimate responsibilty over our team members and their development, meeting and greeting patients, accountability for quality and core measure scores, budgeting issues, and advocacy with our governmental officials to name a few. Most importantly, we both share the responsibilty for providing and ensuring a caring and compassionate environment for those that entrust the future and lives of their loved ones in the hands of our team members and professionals.

I had no idea how much our jobs and our missions overlap. The public school systems in our country are often criticized, but from the interactions I have had since living in the community, I can offer nothing but praise for JCPS. When considering the limited resources with which our schools have to operate, I am quite impressed with and greatly respect the work that our city's teachers are doing to provide for our children. To anyone that would disagree with me, I would encourage you to spend some time in the schools and witness first hand all that is being done to prepare and educate our students for the future.

I feel very fortunate to have had the opportunity to participate in this wonderful program and see the excellent work that our Jefferson County Public School system is providing to our city's youth. To Dr. Ansman, Linda Dauenhauer, and the entire Tully Tiger team, I salute you for a job well done! Thank you for sharing your day and your school with me, it was a truly memorable experience!

PS. Laura Lagerstrom - I greatly appreciate you thinking of me and making the introduction to make this day possible! Thank you!!!

Principal for a Day!

Nursing Leadership in Action

As we all go about our days we all like to be reminded that our work has purpose and is making a difference. That is true for everyone regardless of our position within the organization. I wanted to share an excerpt of a message that I received praising our Chief Nursing Officer, Cheryl Fugatte and the Nursing Ambassador program that she started a few months back.

"I am writing to share my thoughts about the nursing ambassadors. First, I just wanted to say thank you for the opportunity to participate in the nursing ambassadors program and committees. I have been a nurse for almost five years working in the ICU and I have been a Charge Nurse in the ICU for the past year. I love being a nurse and caring for my patients. I would do anything that I can to improve their quality of care and make my workplace better. I feel like this is the first time (since I have been a nurse) that nurses have been empowered to take the initiative to make positive changes in their workplace for the benefit of everyone; patients as well as staff members. I think that it is great when we can all come together and work towards common goals; from safety and communication to RN/MD collaboration, to efforts to achieve Magnet Recognition again." - Charge RN ICU Towers

I can't think of a more fitting way to end the week on a positive note! I have always been a big proponent of empowering our team members to play an active role in helping to lead our organization to reach our vision of achieving excellence and improving lives. I'd like to publicly thank this nurse for her participation, support, and her testimony to the progress we are making. In these tough economic times that we are all facing, it will be the strength of our leadership, culture, and team work that will propel us to reach our goals and overcome our obstacles. Together I believe there is no challenge that we can't overcome! To Cheryl and our entire nursing staff, I salute you for helping to demonstrate leadership and empowerment in action -Thank YOU!

Nursing Leadership in Action

This is safe, right?

One of my new vacation passions is scuba diving. I got certified last summer and look forward to diving every chance I get. Today, I am actually writing this post from the boat in the picture since our departure has been delayed. The reason for the delay is one of the crew members was in a minor car accident this morning and we can't leave without the right number of dive-masters to guide us tourists. You might be asking yourself how this relates to healthcare, and I will attempt to connect the dots...

Diving is an amazing experience, but it can be very dangerous if certain safety precautions are not adhered to strictly. After all, as one fellow diver said to me, when diving you are entering a different world let alone one where you are not on top of the food chain! Yet everyday, flocks of
people gear up and descend into the oceans abyss and then re-emerge safely from their journey. The reason is that certain rules must be adhered to because your life may well depend on it. Equipment is carefully set-up, checked, and then re-checked by a buddy before entering the water. Before the dive begins the dive-master commands everyone's attention (i.e. takes a
"time-out") to discuss the dive site characteristics, maximum depths, bottom-time air supply, and navigational landmarks to ensure everyone can find their way back to the boat. Safety is paramount to any successful dive and it is not taken for granted. The same is true with air travel,
everyone from the pilot and crew to passengers have a pre-flight briefing and plan.

The question to me is why healthcare is resistant to doing something that is so routine with any other risky activity? For years we have preached of the importance of conducting a "time-out" before performing any invasive surgery or procedure. The Joint Commission now mandates it as part of its accreditation standards. The part that boggles me is why we don't
consistently do it with everyone's full attention? Do our surgeon's and staff think they are incapable of doing wrong? Just because someone is proficient in doing something, doesn't mean that they are immune to life's accidents that are waiting to happen to the inattentive or unprepared. I have been driving for years, but I still look in the rear-view mirror
before I put the car in gear and back out of my parking space.

If I've struck a nerve with anyone, I'm glad! I've hopefully made my point to someone who probably is not adhering to our guidelines. To make my point more clear, just as I was leaving for this trip I was informed of an incident that occurred in one of our procedural areas as a result of not performing a correct time-out. No permanent harm was done to the patient, but an unnecessary procedure was performed as a result of this physician and team not performing a thorough time-out. All were fortunate in the outcome (most thankfully our patient), but it wouldn't take much for you to imagine a situation in which the outcome could have been much different.

It is time for this to stop! We all have the right and responsibility to prevent harm from happening to our patients, and it has to start at the bedside. Physician champions like Dr. Mike Bousamra, Chief of the Department of Surgery have personally taken on this cause. For several
months, Dr. Bousamra has been piloting a surgical briefing with the entire surgical crew immediately before and after the case. Everyone identifies themselves by first name (including the surgeon) and describes their role in the case. A checklist of information is discussed and then the procedure begins. This is a practice that has been endorsed by the World Health Organization (WHO) and has been proven to reduce mortality rates by up to a third in the hospitals that have adopted its use (See article in New England Journal of Medicine). We will be exploring how to take Dr. Bousamra's good work and instill that practice throughout the hospital.

I will end for now, but expect to revisit this topic soon. To those that are not up to speed on our best practices, consider yourself advised - as always I welcome any comments you may have on how to guarantee compliance in this area. To the rest I hope I've reaffirmed your commitment to the well being and safety of the patients that entrust their lives with us. Thank you for the good work you are doing!

This is safe, right?

A brief timeout...

Just wanted to let everyone know that I am taking a brief hiatus from the blog as I spend some time with my family re-charging my batteries in Puerto Rico. Being near the ocean is the one place where I truly can relax and get away from it all. I look forward to resuming my blog in about a week - I will hopefully be rested and re-energized by then with some fresh ideas to share with you all. Thank you all for following along with me on this journey!

Until I get back, I thought I'd leave you with a picture that I would entitle "How not to show appreciation to your employees." I ran across this while connecting planes at O'hare Airport. It's often said that its the little things that make a difference, someone needs to pass that tip along to this establishment! Take care and see you soon!

A brief timeout...

A humbling reminder that we aren't quite there yet...

Since I've begun writing this blog I have touched on a number of our highlights as an organization, but every once in a while you have to stop and realize that despite all of our success stories there are some times that we simply miss the mark. Our vision statement highlights our goal "...to achieve excellence, and improve the lives of those we serve and those who serve." I would like to say that we have achieved that vision, and for a great number of patients I believe we are making good on that promise, but we are still not quite there each and every time. No hospital is perfect, ours included.

In December I received a patient grievance about a series of unfortunate events that occurred to one of our patients while in the hospital. The events ranged from issues of cleanliness, to delays in treatment, to team members not practicing appropriate hand hygiene and infection control. While none of the individual events that occurred were acceptable, if only one had happened it may have been able to be forgiven or overlooked. However, when these events were strung together they take on a whole new level of concern. We responded swiftly and appropriately addressing each concern with an action plan, education, and auditing, as hospitals typically do, but all of these things can't change the fact that these events happened in our hospital to this particular patient.

While not a typical practice, today I drove to this former patient's office to follow-up with him personally and to discuss our actions and results to date. As a local businessman, he realizes that it is easy to make empty complaints that all too often fall on deaf ears. To the credit of this gentleman, he has volunteered to not only inform us of his experience, but to get involved in the fix. Over the past several months, he has been diligent to stay in contact with me to understand how we are making good on our promise to ensure that these events are not repeated. Today he has also offered to donate his personal time and service to assist us in finding new ways of perfecting our service to our patients. I have to say that this is a first for me, and I genuinely appreciate his belief and interest in giving our hospital a second chance and the help to make it better.

As humbling as it is to understand that we can always be better, it is comforting to know that there are always people out there who care enough to take the time to help us do so. Today, on behalf of this gentleman and all of our patients, I have reaffirmed that our commitment to achieving excellence and improving lives has to be stronger than ever and I look forward to leading our hospital on that journey....more to come on that topic!

A humbling reminder that we aren't quite there yet...

Summing U of L up, in a Tweet!

The presence of social media is all around us and it recently crossed into real life during a meeting I attended. Our metro chamber of commerce - Greater Louisville Inc. (GLI) hosted a panel discussion with the leadership of the University of Louisville. The panel was composed to discuss the strategic plan and future of the University and included President Dr. James Ramsey, Executive Vice President for Health Affairs Dr. Larry Cook, Executive Vice President for Research Dr. Manuel Martinez, student body President Rudy Spencer, and Provost Dr. Shirley C. Willihnganz.

All presented a glimpse into the future of how the university plans to spur economic growth in the community and develop its translational research agenda, from energy to medicine and everything in between. As one of the nations fastest growing research universities, Louisville is well positioned to benefit economically from the research that will develop into new businesses and technology. Just a couple of weeks ago we jointly announced how Jewish Hospital is partnering to advance cardiac stem cell research and the University also announced their plans to develop a new supercomputer and its commitment to research new forms of renewable energy as just a few of examples.

It was an interesting meeting to say the least, but I had to smile when time was getting short at the end and the moderator, KET's Bill Goodman, asked each member of the panel to sum up the university's future "in a tweet" and told Dr. Ramsey he could ask Rudy, his student body President to explain to him what that was later. This was my first encounter of seeing social media worked into a group discussion, but I'm sure it won't be my last. (For those that may be unfamiliar, Twitter is a social media website that keeps people together via a series of "tweets" or text messages that are limited to 140 characters of less. You can follow me on twitter here.)

So each panel member did a valiant job of keeping their message short and to the point, to the crowds amusement. To me, I can sum it up as this...The University of Louisville's future is bright and we are fortunate to have them as our teaching partner!

Summing U of L up, in a Tweet!