Becker's Hospital Review

37 WOMEN'S LEADERSHIP 37 CEO/STRATEGY sults. ey are so closely intertwined. Taking care of our employees results in a strong culture of excellence. Everyone has the desire to row the boat in the same direction, focusing to be the best and creating the ultimate patient care experience. I know this sounds simple, but our approach to live the UPMC values creates the strongest culture of employee engagement, and that includes treating everyone with dignity and respect. We have consistent programs to enhance communication, including town hall forums, senior leader rounding, hardwired 1:1 employee meetings with feedback and coach- ing, and many celebration and recognition events. Our teams appreciate being recognized for their effort, and we work to have a relation- ship of trust and open, two-way communica- tion. e most significant part of communi- cation is listening with compassion. We also prioritize investing in training and develop- ment to ensure our staff have the right resourc- es to be successful for our patients. We support growth and development, and at UPMC, we be- lieve what is recognized is repeated. We always look to celebrate meaningful contributions and new relationships. All of these things ensure employee engagement. Russell Showers Senior vice president and chief human re- sources officer for Tower Health (West Read- ing, Pa.) One critical lesson I've learned about ensuring sustained employee satisfaction (or engage- ment) is the need to hardwire practices that give people the opportunity to connect with their purpose for being there. Some examples include creating connection between leaders and their staff, engaging employees and giving them a voice on issues that impact their work, and creating programs and environments that demonstrate how the organization values its team members. e second lesson, equally im- portant, is that it takes a lot of work, and some days you are more successful than others. You need to keep at it every day. Linda Venner, MD Senior medical director of medical surgical operations for Intermountain Healthcare (Salt Lake City) Allowing time and space for dialogue around difficult problems, rather than rushing to a "solution" that isn't supported. Everyone wants to be valued, and for their work to be meaning- ful. Creating mutual purpose and psychologic safety is necessary as an invitation for involve- ment to build something better. Creating mu- tual respect allows for dialogue, even with a dif- ference of opinion. And high quality, objective data always helps! Kevin Vermeer President and CEO at UnityPoint Health (West Des Moines, Iowa) You have to regularly celebrate great work. People want to feel valued. ey want to know their work has meaning and take pride in be- ing a part of something impactful. at's why we invest heavily in recognition opportunities at UnityPoint Health. For instance, our teams send tens of thousands of "thank you" cards on a monthly basis to each other. We turned Valen- tine's Day into our own holiday: "You Matter" Day, where we show appreciation to our teams. And every summer, we honor the anniversary of our shared company values. On the day-to- day level, I make it a point to say "good job" to at least one person, and ask our leaders to do the same. Your team is the heart and soul of your organization, so make sure they know it. Juliya Volansky Patient experience administrator in Monte- fiore Health System's radiology department (Bronx, N.Y.) One of the ways we ensure employee satisfac- tion is to recognize our staff with a "thank you" email. If a patient or an employee has a great experience in radiology, the management team sends an email to the whole department salut- ing those employees who were recognized. It's a great opportunity to highlight our staff and motivates the entire team. Alpa VyasVice president of patient ex- perience at Stanford (Calif.) Health Care I think, from my leadership perspective, it is to really be as transparent as possible in terms of the decision-making process and sharing of information that is at an organizational level. I don't ever want my teams to be in a situation where they don't understand context or informa- tion that they're responsible for and also that is important to the organization, so if I'm hearing something in the senior leadership meeting that is appropriate and something I should share, I try to do that with my leadership team and then that's my expectation. e more people know and feel connected to the overarching goals of the organization, the better we are at advancing to meet those goals, whether it's the individual at the front line or the management tier trying to set context and direction. I think transparency and context of decision-making is important. Michael Yungmann President of Mercy Health – Paducah and Irvine (Ky.) Working in healthcare is complex, demanding and sometimes thankless for everyone. Yet every person is blessed with the awesome opportunity to serve someone during that individual's time of greatest need. Our job as leaders is to place our fellow employees in a position to achieve — to fulfill their mission to make a difference. n UNC professor: I 'thank God I'm an academic and not the CEO of a rural hospital' By Morgan Haefner H ealth disparities and hospital closures are making the job of rural hospital CEO one not many covet. Since 2005, the Rural Health Research Program at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill has recorded at least 163 rural hospital closures, with more than 60 percent of them shuttering since 2012. Last year brought the most rural hospital closures in a single year, at 19. George Pink, PhD, a leader of the rural health research program, told Pew the multitude of problems facing rural hospital CEOs is staggering, like health disparities, physician shortages and reimbursement challenges. "Not a day doesn't go by that I don't thank God I'm an academic and not the CEO of a rural hospital," Dr. Pink told Pew. "Recruiting providers, finding money, dealing with payers and lawsuits, dealing with the poor health outcomes, opioid addiction." But as daunting as the landscape is, Pew said rural health leaders are in a unique position to try novel ways to deliver healthcare, thanks in part to their smaller scale. Rural hospitals have looked toward private-public relationships to widen access to care, mobile medical units, telemedicine and investments in attracting young health professionals to rural areas. Loren Stone, the CEO of Endless Mountains Health Systems in Susquehanna Coun- ty, Pa., shared with Pew that it's trying some of these new models. For example, the health system is deploying its personnel in innovative ways, like monitoring patients in their homes and helping them get to medical appointments. n

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