Update for Old and New Healthcare Industry Friends...
Like many other “pioneer generation” leaders in service excellence and patient experience, I’ve spent decades dedicated to optimizing patients’ experience of care.
We have partnered with hospital leaders, physicians, nurses and other clinical and non-clinical support workers to fix lots of things.
We developed countless structures, strategies and systems; policies, procedures and services; outcomes driven algorithms and practices; and a multiplicity of checklists and surveys. We speak a million languages and are growing in cultural awareness, sensitivity and competence.
Now, measured performance is linked to hospital reimbursement, minimally based on achieving and hopefully surpassing the middle average performance of hospitals across America.
All these practices and measures are designed to improve patient safety, optimize clinical outcomes and create positive overall experience. We finally noticed they are all linked.
There are other links too. Along the way, when we allowed ourselves to listen and learn from “outsider” industries and research - hospitality, air safety, entertainment and behavioral economics, we see that a fully “engaged” workforce is a key driver of patient as customer engagement, trust and loyalty. From a finance and growth perspective, “Likelihood to recommend to family and friends” has emerged as possibly the most important question on a survey.
How is your organization faring in this ever-rising sea of data? Is your workforce fully engaged? Are your patients and their families singing your praises? How likely are patients and their families - and your workforce – to recommend your organization to their friends and families as a quality care center and a great place to work? Are you fully supporting your leaders and management staff? How well are you and your organization learning and growing?
Meanwhile, along the Shoreline
(or, where I’ve been since 2014 ...)
In the midst of all this interesting, rewarding and at times, frustrating and exhausting work, life threw me a magnificent curve ball.
At exactly the right time, Richard Flanders and I found each other again and rekindled our love from 45 years ago. We were married less than a year later in 2013!
We’ve been very busy. We found the home of our dreams on the beautiful CT Shoreline, I returned to my first career love of singing, acting, producing concerts for Richard and me. Most recently, throughout the pandemic and while Richard published his first book Under the Great Elm, a Life of Luck and Wonder, I wrote and produced a homegrown min-movie-musical. Sprung from a Pandemic: Songs, Stories and Backyard Fable! Available on my YouTube channel (Anne Tarpey Flanders), our movie is a celebration of life and love, survival and “thrival” as we’re finally (almost) sprung from a pandemic. Richard and I have a great life and I’m profoundly grateful!
Back in the Waves, with a new compass...
Although I stepped out of an active role in the healthcare field, I don’t think that people like us ever really “retire.” From the vantage of the shoreline, for the past several years, I’ve kept a keen eye on the roiling sea of those of you trying to provide best quality healthcare and I’ve sent love and prayers for all healthcare workers and their leaders on the frontline of the pandemic. I’ve experienced high quality and true partnership with care providers for myself and my family, in places and systems and by physicians and healthcare workers new to me. I’m impressed with the care we receive.
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I truly believe that providing consistently safe, caring, best quality patient care rests on a support platform of extraordinary leaders, organizational agility and a fully engaged and healthy workforce. This is a tall order, but healthcare is high mission. In these stressful times, it is more important than ever that we take the time to retreat, remember we are healers, renew our mission, restore energy and sharpen our focus. WE need to continually take care of ourselves. WE are instruments of healing.
I welcome an opportunity to talk with you about some of your triumphs and challenges. I have extensive experience in supporting leaders and managers and finding solutions to improve patient experience, supporting families and building a healthy dynamic workforce!
Anne Tarpey-Flanders