Renton, Wash.-based Providence is empowering team members to spearhead quality improvement and health equity efforts via its Health Equity Fellowship Program.
The fellowship program supports team members in designing equity programs that address their patient population's specific needs. Nineteen employees — ranging from physicians to case managers to revenue cycle workers — participated in the first cohort last year. These employees dedicated 25% of their time participating in didactic health equity training, process improvement and leadership development efforts.
"They get to identify and lead a project in their area of influence so they can look at what they work with every day, bring the equity lens to it and implement a solution," Nwando Anyaoku, MD, Providence's chief health equity and clinical innovation officer, said during an April 11 panel at Becker's 14th Annual Meeting. "And then they become the experts that can train others in the organization."
At one Providence hospital, the leader in charge of language services observed that sepsis patients who had limited English proficiency had longer lengths of stay in the intensive care unit compared to patients who were native English speakers or had a strong proficiency in the language.
The language services leader conducted focus groups with community members and learned this patient population was having trouble understanding sepsis care instructions. She initiated a project to hire bilingual nurse navigators who could communicate with patients in their native language. Within six months of implementing this strategy, the hospital cut the length of stay for limited English proficiency speakers by two days, according to Dr. Anyaoku.
"Imagine scaling that across 53 hospitals," she said, noting the significant benefits to patient experience, outcomes and the organization's financial health.
"We think of not just the moral imperative of health equity as a strategy, but the business imperative, as well, because you can do well while doing good," Dr. Anyaoku said.