The COVID-19 pandemic has had significant effects on hospital and health system operations, finances and staffing. As organizations continue to grapple with these effects, CEOs must rethink existing processes while looking toward the future. This means potentially starting something new to improve and innovate medical care, as well as stopping, halting or quitting approaches that may no longer work best amid today's challenges.
To dive deeper into the issue, Becker's asked hospital and health system CEOs to share the processes and procedures they are starting and stopping. Below are their answers:
Carl Armato. President and CEO of Novant Health (Winston-Salem, N.C.)
Starting: Novant Health has long been at the forefront of innovation in healthcare, pioneering solutions internally and often working with unconventional partnerships to solve the industry's biggest challenges. However, during the pandemic, we saw the need to be able to implement scalable solutions at a moment's notice.
Earlier this year, we launched Novant Health Enterprises, an independent business entity designed to innovate and support scalable solutions. This new entity allows us to partner with other healthcare organizations, create diversified growth and generate value for Novant Health's core business. We are also embracing more digital solutions that can ease pressures on our team members and patients, including enhancing artificial intelligence capabilities, virtual care and virtual reality devices.
Novant Health became the first health system granted an FAA waiver to use drones for the COVID-19 response, delivering supplies via our fleet of drones to Novant Health’s facilities. Earlier this year, we again made history with Zipline, becoming the first organization to deliver a prescription to a patient's front door by drone. I'm excited for the possibilities ahead as we leverage more technological innovations like these to create better outcomes for our patients, providers and communities.
Stopping: We redefined how we respond to our communities during times of crisis, ensuring that we aren't using a one-size-fits-all approach. Novant Health has built updated crisis plans to include a thorough review of bias in current structures that could either be an advantage or disadvantage for those in the communities we serve. We saw gaps in our communities augmented during the pandemic, and when the next crisis hits, we are prepared to react in a manner that is equitable to all facets of our communities.
In fact, Novant Health was recently one of two health systems in the nation to receive National Committee for Quality Assurance Health Equity Accreditation Plus. Additionally, our crisis response training for new team members is now less than 30 days. That means our teams remain as agile as possible and all team members are ready when needed. The COVID-19 pandemic's lasting legacy taught our teams how to pivot, ultimately giving us a new playbook for resiliency in current or future crises.
Liz Dunne. President and CEO of PeaceHealth (Vancouver, Wash.)
Starting: While much of our focus is on an ongoing response to the external pressures affecting all healthcare organizations, we do have an eye on the future — and that includes growth and workforce strategies. Our workforce is the heart of our organization, and without engaged caregivers we cannot fulfill our commitment to remain open and ready to serve our communities. That is why we are making significant investments in the areas of recruitment and retention to address the ever-evolving expectations of the workforce. For instance, we are focused on flexibility (inclusive of scheduling and worksites), supporting our caregivers' well-being through new programming inclusive of mental health, offering expanded financial support and assistance programs, and introducing new professional growth opportunities ranging from leader mentorship programs to professional nurse and clinical advancement programs. We also recognize that childcare is often a struggle, which prompted our new childcare assistance program to help caregivers navigate resources inclusive of daycare, tutors and preschools.
Stopping: We are currently de-escalating our COVID-19 protocols while ensuring our caregivers, patients and visitors continue to remain safe; this work involves the integration of COVID-19 into our daily operations. It's time. Tangentially related, we are hyper focused on ramping down our reliance on travelers who were of great value at the height of the pandemic; now we need to further expand upon and invest in our recruitment and retention efforts.
Michael Tarnoff, MD. President and CEO of Tufts Medical Center (Boston)
Starting: At this stage of the pandemic, we made the decision to re-launch a campaign called "Well-being and Humanizing Work". This program has multiple fundamental elements and aims to empower our employees to bring more balance to the workday and work week with an emphasis on ways to disconnect and take real time off. We also streamlined service line reviews to reduce preparation time and enhance discussion around the things that matter.
Stopping: Last year, we took a pause on formal performance reviews to reduce work burden, though we did ask all managers to have feedback and development conversations. Annual performance reviews have started up again this fall. Lastly, we delayed the launch of several new software platforms to get beyond the last COVID surge, staffing constraints and an Epic installation.
Burton Piper, PharmD. CEO of Roxborough Memorial Hospital (Philadelphia)
Starting: COVID-19 has severely disrupted the labor market, particularly in nursing. We were already seeing a shortage of nurses before the pandemic. COVID-19 only exacerbated that situation, adding an element of unprecedented turnover. More specifically, the pandemic created challenges. First is that the work was complicated and frenetic. Secondly, we were more isolated from one another, and, at times, staff felt hopeless. But we recognized so many heroes among us. Today, we are focused more intently on nursing recruitment, particularly nursing students. We are fortunate to have a diploma nursing program, the Roxborough Memorial Hospital School of Nursing, with excellent outcomes. We continue to compete with the other health systems in the area for talent, offering reasonable compensation and working to be flexible in scheduling to meet patient needs. We are also working on processes to decrease onboarding time without sacrificing the quality of training and placing more emphasis on employee recognition and celebrations.
Stopping: One area we are stopping, or maybe better put, curtailing, is the use of virtual meetings. COVID-19 and its related contagiousness created an environment to move away from face-to-face meetings. While virtual meetings serve a useful purpose, they also decrease needed face-to-face contact where ideas are shared, information is exchanged, and better solutions are developed. Virtual meetings will not go away, but we are working to ensure the best engagement within the confines of appropriate infection control.
Albert Wright Jr. President and CEO of West Virginia University Health System (Morgantown)
Starting: We identified, and have since implemented, ways to communicate more effectively and efficiently across our organization about changes to clinical operations, policies and procedures. We have also enhanced and expanded our ability to target frontline staff with specific clinical communications based on their areas of expertise and training. During the pandemic, we fine-tuned our ability to provide timely information across multiple hospitals and various stakeholder groups.
Stopping: Overall, we have taken a fresh look at our supply chain with an eye to developing more reliable and predictable sources of medical supplies and material, especially during an extended crisis such as the pandemic. We lessened our reliance on international suppliers by sourcing the majority of our material from manufacturers based in the Americas and formed our own group purchasing organization, Allied Health Solutions, in partnership with other regional health systems and hospitals. We also formed a new partnership with Owens and Minor that will result in that organization building a large, regional medical supply distribution center near our main medical campus in Morgantown, W.Va. Due to shortages of dialysate acid concentrate and other blood-cleaning solutions earlier this year, we developed our own in-house ability at our academic medical center to produce these fluids for use with our dialysis patients, thereby lessening our reliance on external supply sources. Although we are no longer producing the concentrate in-house as the national manufacturers have since resolved their supply chain issues, we can easily scale up the internal operation if circumstances demand so.