Blogs

January 5, 2012 - Hapy New Year

Jan 05, 2012 by Marc Strode, CEO
Folks,
I hope your new year is off to a great start, and better yet that you had a great Christmas and hopefully were able to take some time off.  I was able to, and it was great to recharge the batteries and hang out w/ the family. 

We are hitting the ground running so far!  So much to report on....be on the watch for several consecutive blogs as I will try and break some of this up.  For now, it's a reminder that we have made it to the midpoint of our fiscal year.  Time does fly when you are having fun.  We are well ahead of budget for the year, and we will hope to finish strong as we head into what ought to be our busier half of the year.  From a patient satisfaction standpoint, we have moved up 1 quartile in just 6 months on our bedded units!!!! Hip, hip hooray!  It's not easy to move those HCAHPS scores like that, so I really, really appreciate the effort on everyone's part to deliver the kind of care and service we would for our own family.  I have no doubt that we can get into the 2nd quartile by summer.  Let's stay focused on that.  We have some great slides to show you at the upcoming Town Hall Meetings to illustrate the progress.

Let me shift gears to the ED.  If you recall these slides, we've been "in the red" for some time now.  We think we have our Ace in the Hole w/ the new doctors who start later this week (more to come on that), but we are getting a head start before they arrive.  I am so pleased to report that for the month of December with our all-important Press-Ganey satisfaction scores that the Emergency Department was GREEN in 6 of 9 categories--light green in 5 and dark green in 1.  Overall score received an 84, which is the highest it's been in a year.  Rewind to November and while our Press-Ganey scores did not reflect the improvement in November, our other survey tool told a completely different story.  We ask patients as they leave to participate in a short on-line survey right there in the waiting room on a computer kiosk.  In November, 183 patients (almost 10% of all those who received services in the ED) participated.  100%, yes I said 100%--were either VERY SATISFIED (74%) with their nursing care or SATISFIED (26%).  That's huge!!! And it goes beyond the nurses.  To hit that number (perfection) everyone had to be pitching in--the techs, registration, greeters, RT, housekeeping, radiology, lab....on down the line.  And of those 183 patients, 97% said they would recommend the ED.  The following individuals were singled out by our patients in the month of November:  Dr. Sanchez, Don, Dora, Kulyanee, Jose, JP, Jaren, Dennis and Jareny.  Way to go gang!

Now it's not all roses and daisies.  Even in the good times we have tough moments.  As was the case last week when one of our doctors was caught on cell phone camera by one of our patients sleeping at his desk.  While embarrassing and unfortunate, it did happen and we have to own it.  That doctor will never again work a shift at VVRMC.  Unfortunately, he was working a 24 hour shift, which I can only imagine has to be hell.  Those 24 hours shifts are also a thing of the past starting Friday with the new group (Level 5).  That's just unsafe and untenable to ask someone at that stress level and workload to be on their A game for 24 hours straight. I couldn't do it.  So, we are dealing w/ the event, and you might hear about it as it's hit the social media circles.  We have our answer going forward and that's what we will focus upon.  Kudos to Letty who really took the bull by the horns and did all she could on the phone after the fact by those patients impacted as she was in full service recovery mode.

Keep the Spirit and we'll talk soon.

Marc