WHCM End-of-Summer 2017 Networking Event
Women in Healthcare Management is pleased to offer our summer networking event on Aug 21 – a chance to catch up for those who are around over the summer. Please join us for appetizers and a cash bar.
Women in Healthcare Management is pleased to offer our summer networking event on Aug 21 – a chance to catch up for those who are around over the summer. Please join us for appetizers and a cash bar.
Three months ago I gave birth to my son, Dhruv. As expected, motherhood has been a life changing experience. My maternity leave has gone by in a wink and I am getting ready to go back to work.
And just like that, I join millions of women in the US going back to work in 12 weeks of giving birth.
In these 12 weeks, Dhruv and I became each other’ s universe. In mine, the pleasures of motherhood – the first smile, the snuggles and coos balanced out the challenges- breast feeding, sleep deprivation, physical and mental exhaustion. In 12 weeks, I am just about rediscovering the ground below my feet and my son is just about finding a cadence to his being. The physical separation that awaits us, with me going back to work, is a barrier to our progress and is extremely upsetting.
I am most definitely a broken record when I say this, but this timeline is personally cruel and unfair to the newborn and the new mom, economically irrational and socially backwards.
The statistics and information are out there.
Participation of women in the labor force has declined in the US, women continue to make 77 cents for every dollar a man earns, women are significantly underrepresented on corporate boards and governments, US is the only developed country that does not offer paid time off, women cite lack of extended maternity leave and flexibility as leading causes for leaving the workforce- you get the idea.
These facts add up. At an individual level , they add up to a systemic bias preventing women from achieving true equality with their male peers. At an organizational level, they create pockets of short term productivity loss due to the new parent’s absence. Given the limited time that new parents are away, there is a low ROI to create an plan B, keeping the status quo. At an economic level, this keeps the labor market unequal and not at its full potential. Lastly, as a society, we are downgrading the very fundamental act of creating the next generation of citizens and disproportionately affecting low and middle income families.
If we as a society are serious about equality, this has got to change. The narrative of “women can have it all” has to change. From focusing on the individual we have to change the narrative to what we can do at a macro level – in schools and companies and governments – to create a support structure to systematically address the design flaws in the status quo.
There are several societies that seem to have made strides. While we don’t have to blindly duplicate European, Nordic or Asian models, should we not at least evaluate the American model? Test and innovate to create newer models of our own? Use technology to allow for flexibility without hampering productivity? We pride ourselves on innovations and for being boundary pushers, so why not when it comes to women and motherhood ?
Personally, I am extremely fortunate to have a partner who truly is an equal parent, to have family and friends that bend over backwards to create a taut support system and to afford help, big and small, when I need it. Professionally, I am fortunate to work for a company and team that values flexibility.
But I am the exception, not the norm. And given that it is 2017, isn’t that a shame?
Dhruv and I will cope to our reality, I simply wish the reality were a different one. One with the most precious resource of all- more time.
Blog post by WHCM CO-Chair Dhana Kotwal
“When you divorce providers from fee-for-service as a revenue stream, all kinds of exciting things can happen.” That blue-sky vision from Commonwealth Care Alliance Chief Medical Officer Toyin Ajayi, MD, MPhil, struck the keynote for this year’s WHCM “hot topic” Spring Forum panel presentation. Dr. Ajayi was speaking to this year’s panel topic, “Upending the Visit Paradigm: Bringing Care to the Patient.” Held at the end of March, the panel presentation also featured Alexis Bernstein, Wellframe’s Senior Director for Client Services, and Rebecca Bialecki, BSN, Ph.D., Vice President for Community Health and Chief Change Agent at Heywood Healthcare. Alexandra Schweitzer, a healthcare consultant with diverse experience building innovative care delivery models, moderated the discussion, which highlighted initiatives to expand care outside the traditional office setting.
The discussion kicked off with panelists identifying their motivation for innovating ways to deliver care to patients where they live. For Toyin and CCA, it’s about doing more for patients who need more frequent touches, while for Rebecca and Heywood Healthcare, it’s about bringing specialty care to patients in isolated rural communities. Alexis and Wellframe are looking to keep patients connected with care between visits. Heywood Health’s service area is about as rural as Massachusetts gets, so it’s hard to connect patients with care if it means getting each patient to where the care is. True to her title of Chief Change Agent, Rebecca found different route through telemedicine.
Heywood began by creating one of the first teleneurology services, providing access to a scarce but much needed specialty resource by building on their tele-stroke experience, which connected their care teams with physicians at Mayo Clinic via remote consultation. That success led to Heywood’s recent telepsych service for children. The service initially links behavioral health providers with families via a telehealth connection, and then sends out nurses to provide follow-up home visits. The model has enabled children with more acute mental health needs to get stabilized at home and avoid hospitalization. Heywood has seen gratifying results, with kids able to stay well with less psychiatric medication, and a decrease in hospital admissions. The resulting improvement in the hospital’s Leapfrog score will eventually mean better payment.
At Wellframe, care managers reach out to patients between visits, focusing on transitional or other vulnerable times. At each touch the care manager works on a small piece of the care plan with the patient, making the information more manageable for patients, many having multiple medical conditions. Through this highly efficient “mobile amplification” of care management, more patients are able to stay connected to care. Wellframe has demonstrated an ability to reduce no-shows for the critical post-hospital-discharge visit, as well as to boost medication and care plan adherence.
At CCA, Toyin and the team are developing ways to measure value when bringing care to highly vulnerable patients at home or in other new alternatives sites. When a provider organization leaves “transactional” care — and is no longer relying on the usual tallies of admissions, procedures, etc. – how will the providers know if they are getting the behaviors they want? Rather than measuring the absence of poor outcomes, CCA has been working on measuring the positive. Instead of counting hospital admissions, for example, measure days at home. Toyin and her team caution that it takes 18-24 months to see the benefits of increased investments in primary and behavioral health care through new models, but patience pays off, as costs are definitely reduced.
After our panelists had unpacked their organizations’ experiences, the question-and-answer session yielded a few gems for successful implementation of initiatives to expand care beyond traditional delivery settings:
Blog post by WHCM Steering Committee Member Emily Brower
Although I have worked in government affairs most of my professional life, I am always struck by the many times I’ve had the opportunity to learn and grow based on my various interactions with colleagues. I consider it my responsibility to continually challenge myself to work to improve and no matter where you may be in your career, I believe there are always ways to enhance your communication skills and your personal “brand.” Several years ago a colleague pointed out to me that I always seemed to give credit to others, but never took the time to “toot my own horn” and by doing so, I diminished my own accomplishments.
I took this constructive criticism to heart, and really gave a great deal of thought to what my colleague had said to me. I think as women, we often are not comfortable showcasing our own triumphs and achievements. However over time, I have made a great deal of effort to take a step back and make certain that where appropriate make sure others know where I contributed to the success of a project. It has definitely been something that I continually have to remind myself to do and something I would encourage all members of WHCM to be mindful of as well, whether you are early in your career or further along in your career. I must say that it has been among the best advice that I have ever received from a colleague and one that I have taken to heart and made as one of my mantras.
Blog post by WHCM Steering Committee Member Kathy Keough
Join Women in Healthcare Management on Anthony’s patio on June 5 for our annual summer networking event – a chance to touch base and mingle between our Spring and Fall events. Appetizers will be served, and we will have a cash bar.
As leaders in healthcare organizations, we often need to take the time to pause and have a gut check; these can be with ourselves, our staff, our leadership. Most recently I had our department do a check on our overall outlook: Who is looking toward decreasing workload, retirement, life changes that will alter the productivity of our team? We looked also at the wish list we are looking to accomplish within the next five years, referring to our mission, vision, values and strategic plan for the organization. Where will we expand regionally, what investment are we capable of making, and what is the return?
Most importantly, as leaders we tend to forget to gut check within ourselves. Are we where we want to be? Are we looking to further our education, obtain additional certification, again, what is the investment and what is the return?
Taking time for ourselves seems an unattainable goal most days, performing these gut checks give us a little reprieve from the day to day business, and look within ourselves as well as our business to see the potential.
Blog post by WHCM Steering Committee Member Jen Pendleton
Author Alan Burdick’s new book, “Why Time Flies,” examines his own life as he watches his kids grow up but also how our brains observe and process time. He discussed it with Robert Siegel on All Things Considered, my favorite show on public radio. What I found fascinating is our brain’s ability to “think on its own” and actually trick our perception of reality by anticipating when and how long things take.
He says, “Our brains do a lot of work to hide what you might call reality from us. So, every time you type, for instance, on a computer keyboard there’s actually about a 35-millisecond delay between you pressing a key on the keypad and that letter appearing on the screen. But as far as your brain is concerned, it happens instantaneously. There’s no gap. It’s actually been shown that your brain can sustain about a tenth-of-a-second delay between your action and its consequence.”
Think about that – and your place in time can get pretty philosophical.
Listen to the podcast or read the transcript here.
Join us for dinner, networking, and what promises to be an educational and interesting panel discussion.
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I heard an interesting snippet on NPR the other morning, about women and our ambition. Shankar Vedantam, NPR’s social science correspondent and the host of a podcast I love called the Hidden Brain, discussed a study which found single women as much less likely to express career ambitions compared to married women or men. What is the reason behind this? Are we creating a glass ceiling for ourselves?
Listen to the podcast or read the transcript here.
I’ve been thinking a lot lately about the judgment of others and how that plays into our everyday lives – both personally and professionally. Do you write people off because of the way they act or look? Perhaps it’s not consciously done, but are we predisposed to it? I watched a TED talk on the existence of prejudice and bias and how it can help us categorize our lives. In the video Paul Bloom shares stories from research on prejudice including one study that illustrated young children showing an affinity for certain stuffed animal characters over other stuffed animals based on the stuffed animals’ “preference” for foods like green beans vs. graham crackers. Are we wired to like people -and even stuffed animals – based on some subconscious cues that may not make a lot of rational sense? Acknowledging that is a part of being human and may be the first step toward reducing the impact prejudice has on the way we think and act. Take a look if you have a moment.