‘Elevate’ program gaining momentum
James Mumford
Rhonda Tully
John Kuhn
Freddie Easley
Vanderbilt leaders say far-reaching changes are in store and a new organizational style is about to assert itself at the Medical Center. The upgrade comes with a name that's becoming more familiar: elevate.
In daylong sessions in November and January, some 995 leaders from all areas of the Medical Center were introduced to the elevate approach to service and operational excellence. Preceded by nearly a year of negotiation and planning, the sessions began a long-term engagement between leaders from across VUMC and organizational development pros from the Studer Group, a much sought-after health care consulting firm. In sessions coming up later this month, managers and faculty leaders will learn more about how they can begin to adapt elements of the Studer recipe into their daily work at VUMC.
Excellence, integrity and ongoing improvement are the credo of the Vanderbilt clinical enterprise and leaders say elevate is intended first of all to help VUMC best embody these core values. To gather some early impressions of elevate, we talked with leaders from several corners of VUMC.
“My general impression of elevate is that it's back to the basics, that it begins with how we treat each other,” said James A. Mumford, director of Admitting.
“I see elevate as an effort on behalf of senior administration to get into closer contact with staff and create an atmosphere that's enjoyable and productive, where everyone is in sync with the goals of the institution,” said Rhonda L. Tully, administrative director of Radiology Services. “We all know we're here for our patients; this is more about the way we treat each other and how that can contribute to a better work environment.”
“One thing that impressed me was the way Dr. Jacobson and Mr. Urmy stood up and said that this was a new day for Vanderbilt,” said Freddie L. Easley, an assistant director for facilities and operations with the School of Medicine. “It was clear that they see us as all being in this together, and that the changes apply to everyone, themselves included.” (Harry R. Jacobson, M.D., is vice chancellor for Health Affairs and Norman B. Urmy is executive vice president for Clinical Affairs.)
Like Easley, Tully was struck by the emphatic way VUMC leaders expressed their commitment to elevate. “I heard from the senior management of this hospital that they were going to follow this through, and that this isn't simply another of the multitude of programs that we have under way. And I believe them.”
The introductory sessions for elevate dealt with some of the common barriers to change in health care, and the tools and techniques packaged by Studer to allow organizations to surmount those barriers.
“The culture of medicine is characterized by attention to the negative aspects of any question, the search for problems and their solutions, and that emphasis naturally tends to make for a less positive workplace,” said John E. Kuhn, associate professor of Orthopaedics and a physician with Vanderbilt Sports Medicine. “One of the messages I took away from the first session was that we shouldn't pass up opportunities to talk about what is going well with our work.”
“I'm already seeing a change at meetings,” Mumford said. “We've always automatically talked about the negative, but we're beginning also to talk more about what we're doing right.”
Corey M. Slovis, M.D., professor and chair of Emergency Medicine, said one of the things that struck him from the first session was that, “We should never take really good behavior for granted. We should go out of our way to complement colleagues and co-workers who really do well.”
Other academic centers that have worked with the Studer Group have focused exclusively on the clinical side of their operation, and that was the plan at VUMC as well, until leaders began to consider more fully the benefits of expanding elevate to include the academic program.
That is why the elevate introductory session on Jan. 27 included attendance from medical school associate deans, chairs of basic science departments, center directors, business officers and key members of the research faculty. “The focus is on leadership and how our leaders influence our service culture,” Steven G. Gabbe, M.D., dean of the School of Medicine, said to the group. He added that elevate is “about how a service culture can positively impact all of our missions, including our educational and research environments.”
Upcoming sessions
“Sending thank-you notes for exemplary behavior is something I hadn't previously made a practice of doing, and I'm finding it very worthwhile,” Slovis said. He was recently prompted to write a thank-you note to Medical Receptionist Dolores L. Lee-Rohr, after he noticed her unflappable manner and her unfailing way of anticipating the needs of the work group, all during a day of intense patient volume in the adult Emergency Department.
Leaders from across VUMC — you're a leader, in the official sense, if you have responsibility for hiring decisions and for evaluation of employee performance — will be invited to daylong learning sessions Feb. 24 and 25 sponsored by the elevate Leadership Development Institute. The main topics will be tools and techniques that leaders can use to improve communication with employees.
• “Rounding” is a communication strategy leaders use to identify barriers, expectations and responsibilities, and to recognize and reward good work. One aspect of rounding is that leaders spend time visiting operational areas of the Medical Center to meet with staff and faculty.
• elevate calls for leaders to make a practice of sending thank-you letters when employees do something particularly brilliant.
• Under elevate, VUMC goal setting and performance measurement are divided into five subject areas — people, service, quality, financial performance, and growth; the February session will introduce leaders to some of the goals and measures that will come into play under these five headings.
Elevate comes with an executive steering committee headed by Vice Chancellor Harry R. Jacobson, M.D., and separate committees for leadership development, leadership evaluation, communication, standards, service and operational excellence, performance measurement, physician satisfaction and employee recruitment and retention.