Becker's Health IT + Clinical Leadership + Pharmacy: 3 Questions with Jennifer Velez, Executive Vice President of Community and Behavioral Health for RWJBarnabas Health

Jennifer Velez serves as Executive Vice President of Community and Behavioral Health for RWJBarnabas Health.

On May 2nd, Jennifer will serve on the panel "Health IT Technology and Behavioral Healthat Becker's Health IT + Clinical Leadership + Pharmacy conference. As part of an ongoing series, Becker's is talking to healthcare leaders who plan to speak at the conference, which will take place May 2-4, 2019 in Chicago.

To learn more about the conference and Jennifer's session, click here.

Question: What one strategic initiative will demand the most of your time and energy in 2019?

Jennifer Velez: In 2018, our system’s Tackling Addiction Task Force really gained momentum, and the work our system is doing to address the opioid crisis across the communities we serve will continue to occupy a good amount of my time and energy this year as well. We still have a lot of work to do to fully combat the crisis of addiction specifically, and address the stigma and disease of substance use disorder more broadly. 

Substance use disorder is complex – the treatment for which as a disease instead of a moral failing is relatively new, and the need to reverse stigmatizing behaviors is tremendous. RWJBarnabas Health responded by engaging a multi-disciplinary task force, which I co-chair along with our physician leader for our system’s emergency departments. Together we have assembled a leadership team, which includes pharmacy, information technology, nursing, physicians, communications staff, educators, peer recovery specialists, clinical navigators, our system’s policy leadership, and our Institute for Prevention and Recovery leadership. This mighty group works tirelessly to ensure that the strategic priorities we have identified (education, prevention, intervention and treatment, and recovery) can be applied in real time at each of our acute care hospitals and our 100-bed psychiatric hospital, so that we can impact as many individuals as possible.

With respect to technology-related efforts technology in 2019, we are building treatment guidelines, which require providers to adhere to a prescribed treatment model through our electronic medical record. One example is a clinical decision-making tool in order to treat withdrawal of opiates in our emergency rooms. Much of this is new for our providers, but we are proceeding in a way that infuses education, discipline and best practice.

Q: Healthcare takes a lot of heat for not innovating quickly. What's your take on this?

JV: Perhaps as much as I might hate to admit it, I would agree that this can oftentimes be the case. With substance use disorder, however, and specifically the opioid crisis with which NJ and so many other states are grappling, we could not allow the perfect to be the enemy of the good. We had to respond and react quickly to the rate of deaths we were seeing across our system and our state. We know that our peer recovery model has been highly effective in engaging people to consider and engage in treatment, when past efforts have perhaps been unsuccessful for them. While the efficacy of that model has yet to be proven in a research study, we know that this innovative program has been life saving for the nearly 12,000 lives we have touched to date. Within three months (not three years, as originally estimated), our system built a non-physician order, which triggers a HIPPA-compliant text message, which triggers our recovery specialists being deployed immediately to a patient’s bedside.

Q: Can you share some praise with us about people you work with? What does greatness look like to you when it comes to your team?

JV: Absolutely! Our team is relentless. They are gritty warriors with hearts bigger than life and they see the possibility of recovery in every individual they meet who suffers from this disease. They epitomize greatness. Their work is non-stop and their commitment to ensure that every life is saved is beyond any measure. They are who you want in a foxhole. And for the thousands of people who battle addiction every day, our team is in that foxhole for them.

Copyright © 2024 Becker's Healthcare. All Rights Reserved. Privacy Policy. Cookie Policy. Linking and Reprinting Policy.

 

Featured Whitepapers

Featured Webinars