AdventHealth Lake Wales (Fla.) celebrated its fifth year as part of Altamonte Springs, Fla.-based AdventHealth in 2024 with zero hospital-acquired infections in two key units, reduced turnover and improved employee satisfaction.
Turnover was 38% when Royce Brown became president and CEO of the hospital in 2021. The hospital began 2024 at 17.1% and ended the year at 12.4%, Mr. Brown told Becker's.
Year-over-year progress has been driven by leadership development and employee feedback initiatives. Competing with larger markets such as Orlando and Tampa, the hospital has found success with word-of-mouth recruitment fueled by employee satisfaction.
"There's a lot of time spent on collecting feedback from staff," Mr. Brown said. "'What do you like to see? What can we change? What can we improve?' That's really what's been driving our turnover down, the fact that people are being heard. We're giving them forums to change things."
Lower turnover and improved employee satisfaction — Mr. Brown said they are up four percentile points in 2024 — have helped drive quality improvements.
"The more you have consistent staff and the more you embed your culture, you don't have to constantly train new people," he said. "When you do have new people to train, your team is really driving the culture. It doesn't have to always come from the top."
One result: AdventHealth Lake Wales reported zero hospital-acquired infections in its operating rooms and medical-surgical unit in 2024. "To say I'm proud of having a year of no infections in those units is putting it lightly," he said.
Clinical leadership played a key role, with Chief Nursing Officer Julie Stark and Chief Medical Officer Angela Alfaro, MD, joining the hospital in 2024. The hospital is also expanding leadership development programs focused on education and organizational effectiveness.
"We've all, at some point, joined this company and moved up, and it was on the backs of the programs that this hospital and this company have," Mr. Brown said.
The hospital also saw significant patient volumes in 2024, serving more patients than ever outside of the pandemic.
To improve emergency department efficiency, the hospital opened a "vertical bay" space in December to reduce wait times and left-before-being-seen rates. The private bays accommodate one patient and a family member for those awaiting test results and do not require an ED bed.
The hospital first implemented a vertical bay process during the pandemic but lacked a dedicated space to optimize it until now, Mr. Brown said.
"We are the busiest ER in the West Florida Division in terms of number of rooms and volume through each room, so we have to be very efficient," he said. "We've been using it in our 13-bed ER, and now those four bays allow us to see a lot more patients faster."