You Speak. We Listen.
with CEO Rick Floyd, Sherman Hospital, Elgin IL |
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n the last year, Sherman Hospital in Elgin, IL moved their physician satisfaction
from the 52nd to the 93rd percentile (Press Ganey). How did they do it? CEO |
Rick Floyd credits the gains to “aggressive communication.” |
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| “‘You speak. We Listen.’ is a phrase we use a lot at Sherman to express our demeanor,” adds Chief Operating Officer Linda Deering. “We use it to convey how much we value physician input and feedback and to connect back to what we specifically deliver.” |
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| When physicians requested hot food in the physician lounge, for example, Sherman rolled it out reminding them that “You Speak. We listen.” A list of new capital equipment that Sherman has purchased based on physician requests also appears under the same headline in the medical staff newsletter. |
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How It All Started
“While we were increasing transparency with a ‘no secrets’ culture at Sherman, we also made a focused effort to engage physicians as valued members of our team and to communicate that we wanted their active involvement in our decisionmaking processes,” says Floyd. |
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| For starters, eight members of the executive team rounded intensively on physicians with at least 20 face-to-face meetings each. “We heard everything from praise to concerns,” he adds. “But mostly what we heard about was requests to help with daily operational issues, like getting imaging results back faster, scheduling tests more efficiently, and improving the quality of nursing. We took action on these issues.” |
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| Next, Sherman asked the medical staff committee to name the top three or four operational issues they felt should be addressed at the hospital. Physicians asked them to decrease the time for patient transfer out of the emergency department, improve inpatient turnaround time for key CT angiograms, and to improve the percentage of stat orders done, among other issues. |
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| Leaders created and updated a monthly scorecard to track progress on those indicators and share results with physicians quarterly. Because of its year one success, Sherman is now in the process of identifying next level issues for a year two scorecard. |
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Moving to the Next Level
As a stronger culture of partnership with physicians emerged, Sherman also formalized a new hospital-physician collaborative meeting structure to address problems and facilitate progress on operational issues in perioperative services. The meetings, which are not part of physicians’ traditional hospital responsibilities, give physicians more direct input in how to run the operating room. |
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| During the course of those initial meetings, physicians and nurses acknowledged the need for a prescribed process to promote respect and collegiality for improved patient safety and clinical outcomes. As a result, the team drafted a formal Perioperative Collegiality Policy and Procedure that offers a step-by-step approach to reporting and resolving incidents of disruptive behaviors or performance for the benefit of all. (See sidebar to download a copy of the policy.) |
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| In fact, Diane Dexter, the nurse who facilitated the sessions that ultimately created the policy, will be presenting it in a poster session at an upcoming conference of the American Association of Periorperative Nurses. |
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| Finals tips? Follow-through is the key. “It all crumbles if we don’t get back to physicians to tell them whether we can or cannot meet a request,” says Floyd. “I find that physicians can accept an explanation of why we can’t do something much better than they can accept no response at all. I use a tickler to track what I have brought to closure.” |
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Rick Floyd, FACHE has served as president and CEO of Sherman hospital as well as its parent corporation and nursing home since 2001. As a 28 year healthcare veteran, he is also current chairman of the Chicago Hospital Risk Pooling Program and board member of the Metropolitan Chicago Healthcare Council. |
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