Stonish Pierce, FACHE, serves as Chief Operating Officer at Holy Cross Health, Trinity Health Florida.
Stonish will serve on the panel "Strategically Growing Your Hospital or Health System: What Works and What Doesn’t" at Becker's Hospital Review 12th Annual Meeting. As part of an ongoing series, Becker's is talking to healthcare leaders who plan to speak at the conference, which will take place in Chicago from April 25-28, 2022.
To learn more about the conference and Stonish's session, click here.
Q: What are your top priorities for 2022?
Stonish Pierce: Continue the progress of achieving long-term financial sustainability for all regional service lines. Second, continue focusing on employee engagement to improve retention among all disciplines in an increasingly employee-driven market. Third, reduce contract labor expenses especially among nursing and ancillary areas. Fourth, execute on partnerships to remain viable in an increasingly competitive market. Lastly, implementing structural changes to regional quality improvement reporting, including instituting formal metrics across all ancillary and support services so all team members understand how they contribute to improving quality.
Q: How do you plan to pivot strategies this year to better serve patients?
SP: Although I’ve always demonstrated interest and provided leadership to enhance the patient experience throughout my career, it’s been elevated at Holy Cross Health as of this year. My first year at Holy Cross focused on instituting operational discipline and structure, early optimization of financial performance and employee engagement, but patients are the reason we exist. Optimizing the patient experience was a planned pivot in 2022. Although we have a great local culture, employees are quickly realizing that the patient experience will not be a “flavor of the month” and many are buying in to the understanding that providing an optimal patient experience is how we would also want our loved ones to be cared for.
Q: What will the lasting legacy of COVID-19 be on the healthcare system?
SP: The long-term prevalence of remote work, care delivery and governance will become a lasting legacy for appropriate roles across the healthcare continuum. During the pandemic we saw much of the healthcare system successfully pivot to remote work, providers pivot to telehealth and governance adapt as Boards equally pivoted to advising remotely. There will be employee disciplines in which we will no longer be competing for talent regionally, but instead nationally as we’ve realized that many back office, support functions and strategic roles can be performed remotely. I also believe that many employees have adapted to working remotely and many will seek employers that offer permanent remote work environments. Similarly, many healthcare entities will broaden their reach and seek Board members from a national perspective.