Blogs

April 11, 2012 - Headlines

Apr 11, 2012 by Marc Strode, CEO
Folks,
While I have always enjoyed the salesman part of my job (I was always the kid w/ the lemonaide stand or the one trying to convince my parents to have a garage sale so I could sell all my stuff I probably had gotten last Christmas or birthday.....) but I've been glad not to have the life of a traveling salesman.  Unfortunately it seems as of late that I have been on the road more than I (as well as my family) would like.  As I type this, I am preparing for one more week where I have to hit the road--this week for some meetings in Dallas where all of the rural hospitals in the state will be meeting to spend much of our two days together discussing all of the changes around state funding that impacts VVRMC.  There is about $5.5 million at risk for us, so it's important that we have representation at the table to make sure we continue to receive the reimbursement we are owed from the state, mainly related to the disproportionate share of uncomponsated care we provide over here on the border.  Good news for me is after the next couple of days, I hope to settle back into my Del Rio routine, which will mean more time in the hospital where I would prefer to be.

In between trips I have had the chance to read the paper, and I like what I see!  While not official hospital business, I would be remiss if I didn't point out that Gloria Ziegler's daughter, Marie Ziegler, was named Miss Val Verde in the recent pageant held this weekend.  That's really cool!  I know Gloria is so proud of Marie, and we'll look forward to her being at all the events around town this next year and certainly will be pulling for her at the Miss Texas Teen USA competition in Houston later this year. 

And then right below Marie's story in the paper was our own Angie Prather, who was nicely recognized for being the District Firefighter of the Year.  Angie, very proud of you to on this outstanding accomplishment!  Way to go girl!

In Sunday's paper, we ran our full-page ad as part of "This Is My Hospital" campaign, again using one of our patients to tell their story of why they have made VVRMC their choice for healthcare. 

Sid is back.  He did another community seminar last night and we had 60 guests come out to hear him.  That's good exposure for us and good for the community to hear his message.  We are focusing this round on our housekeeping and dietary staff around some very specific training regarding their direct interaction with patients and families at the bedside.  We also have some additional nurses going through the training, and low-and-behold, we put Sid in front of our doctors!  We had about 10 attend, and that was good for them to observe our approach to our customer service training w/ you guys.  They are part of the team, too and certainly can add (or detract) from the patient experience. 

We are measuring closer than ever before throughput in the Emergency Room.  We are focused on several key metrics that we know drive patient satisfaction:  time to MD greet, overall length of stay, and time it takes to get admitted.  At the end of April I will share our times with you so you can see how we did for the month.  We will use April as Ground Zero, our baseline, for which we will work to push everyone---especially our physicians in the ED--to get on board.  As we continue to change processes and rebase expectations, these things will not happen overnight.  But they don't have to.  We need to show incremental progress, and I know that months from now and certainly by this time next year, we will look at this initiative and scorecard and see a remarkable difference.  Good stuff.

Let me introduce Tom Grimert to you.  Tom is the new guy around here who is serving as our Interim CFO.  Forrest's last day is next Tuesday, and Tom has been on the ground the last 2 weeks learning from Forrest and beginning to get acclimated to the team here in Del Rio.  Tom will serve in this role indefinitely until we find our permanent replacement.  It is great to have Tom on the team.  I know Tom very well as we worked together at Methodist for nearly 10 years.  Tom is currently the Controller for the entire Methodist Healthcare System and brings many years of healthcare and financial experience to the table.  Please help me in welcoming Tom to the team.  We already have him drinking out of a fire hydrant!!!

What a beautiful time of year it is!  We have been blessed with rain....everything is green (for now).....Spring is in the air.....it's warming up on the Creek!!!!.....VVRMC is a great place to be.....and right now we are in a really good place!!!!!  Thanks so much for all you do for our patients.  What a privlidge it is to work with this team.  I am so proud of how we are doing and what we are doing for our community.  The progress is tremendous and sometimes when you are in the trenches each day is not easily noticable until you step back and take a look.  We are in the home stretch of our fiscal year and look to end on a positive note.  Keep the great ideas coming and keep front-and-center that all that matters is the outcome and the experience around it.  Everything else comes out in the wash!!!!!

Keep the Spirit,
Marc