2015-may-june

Healthcare Journal of new orleans

MAY / JUN 2015

prepare ourselves to be able to function.The

good thing is that we are part of the largest

non-profit healthcare system in theworld. So

we are able to draw from this large VA net-

work of 152 hospitals, draw from that exper-

tise, not just with the folks that we are hiring,

which will be about another 1000 employ-

ees, but we’ll also be able to draw from the

folks that wemay not be hiring, but can assist

us in preparing to operationalize the facility.

From an administrative perspective part

of what we work on, on a day-to-day basis

in any hospital, is themorale of the staff, the

productivity, the efficiency of our operations,

andwe do that in away that is based on good

changemanagement strategies.This is a big

change—going froman 8-4Monday through

Friday operation that’s regionalized to a 24-7,

full blown inpatient facility. You need a sys-

tematic strategy for making those changes.

A big part of that is our communications

plan to make sure that not just the leader-

ship understands, but the staff understands,

the patients understand, our partners and

key stakeholders understand where we are

today, where we want to be a year and a half

from now, and what the critical steps are to

get there.

We’ve spent a lot of time communicating

on our three point plan and then drilling

down on that plan with teams that we have

established, talking to veteran service orga-

nizations, talking to Congressional offices,

talking to other healthcare providers in our

community, talking to the medical schools.

This is the second day of my eighth week—

I’vemet somany people—and it’s always the

same story—this is how we are doing it.

For us, our three point plan is tomake sure

that we are providing very good care, timely

care, to the patients that we have on the

books right now, which is 66,000 enrolled

veterans.That’s the number one priority.The

number two priority—put the framework in

place to be able to activate the hospital in

the safest way possible. And then number

three is to establish a workforce strength-

ening program that is going to allow us to

attract themost talented people and position

us to compete well as a choice employer in

the area, recognizing that just like veterans

have choices, we have competition.We want

to make sure we are drawing on the most

talented clinicians, the most talented sup-

port staff, andwe are able to sustain it.That’s

why those relationships with the educational

institutions are so important.

How does the larger VA system support

you? Is there a model that you are using?

The VA has a systematic approach for

standardizing care across the VA. There are

variances between hospitals, but for themost

part, thewaywe deliver care, the policies that

we use to guide us, the procedures that we

use to guide us, are national, and in that sense

we benefit from that standardization. It’s like

all good policies—they only take you so far

and then you have to customize for the local

idiosyncrasies, the local things that apply to

the programs that we are implementing here,

but we do benefit from that standardization.

We draw from that network, we visit other

VA hospitals, we familiarize ourselves with

the specifics.We have site visits fromsubject

matter experts who are able to guide us and

in that sense we are able to put together acti-

vation plans that allowus to get fromwhere

we are now to where we want to be.

We’re early in the process in a lot of ways

because buildings haven’t been turned over

to us, we don’t have the space to operate

Galen believes all disease can be identified through a system that

ties Hippocrates’ humors to the four elements (earth, air, fire, water).

Diagnosis entails working out which area is out of balance.

c. 100 BC

The ancient Chinese text, Yellow Emperor’s Inner Canon, explains how to make diagnoses

based on the relation between humans, their environment, and the cosmos, on the contents

of the body, on human vitality and pathology, and on the symptoms of illness. Diagnostic

techniques include inspection, listening, smelling, inquiry, palpation.

c. 180 AD