Becker's Health IT + Clinical Leadership + Pharmacy: 3 Questions with Noomi Hirsch, Vice President of Operations for Lutheran Medical Center of SCL Health

Noomi Hirsch, MSc, MBA, serves as Vice President of Integrated Services for Lutheran Medical Center of SCL Health.

On May 3rd, Noomi will serve on the panel "Best Thoughts on How to Use EMRs To Improve Care – 3 Key Thoughtsat 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 Noomi's session, click here.

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

Noomi Hirsch: My main focus this year will be to improve our Patient Flow. We are especially focusing on flow within our own four walls. We have been on a journey at Lutheran Medical Center for several years now to improve our discharge process and we are continuing on that path. You will probably ask why we are doing that? The reasoning is simply put as external pressures. We see more and more bundled payments coming our way that encourages us to analyze and optimize our processes for Patient flow. We also see increased focus on coverage and payment in general from our insurance Partners, but most importantly - because it's the right thing to do for our Patients! When Patients are medically cleared to go home or transfer to other facilities, it's a disservice to them to 'hold on' longer than necessary. I find it imperative for us, as a Hospital to ensure that we have everything in place so that Patients can leave when they are ready to do so from a medical perspective.

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

NH: I would say that this is probably true. In fact, that was my own impression as well when I first moved in to the Healthcare setting myself. However, I would say that it's not because of a lack willingness. I see more and more innovative things going on in the Healthcare world - things that will improve Patient Care and experience tremendously. But it takes time to get them widespread. The reason in my opinion is because our world is complex. When I say that, I don't only refer to our own world within a Hospital or a Healthcare setting but the entire continuum of care. Healthcare is under extreme regulatory scrutiny - as we should be. We are dealing with people! We cannot afford to have our failures affect our 'consumers'. Safety and high Quality ALWAYS comes first when you are dealing with Healthcare and I think it's because of the multiple layers of 'Quality assurance' that Innovation in Healthcare takes longer than in perhaps other industries.

Q: What do innovators/entrepreneurs from outside healthcare need to better understand about hospital and health system leaders?

NH: I think entrepreneurs that are not familiar with Healthcare needs to understand that for any Hospital or Health System Leader, Patients and their Families always comes first! I have yet to meet a Healthcare worker that isn't in their role for the primary reason of wanting to do something better for the sick and vulnerable in their communities. Whether it's profit or non-profit organizations, that is still the common denominator. At my Hospital, we have a very active PFAC team (Patient & Family advisory committee) and we engage them frequently in our improvement work. We run our improvement ideas through this team to ensure that the proposed changes makes sense for our patients and their Families. In some cases we even invite former Patients in to our workshops to ensure that we have the 'voice of our customers' present when we discuss new opportunities. An idea that make perfect sense from a business perspective, but if it doesn't pass the smell test of our Patients, we should not move forward.

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