Triad Leadership and our Summer Plans
- June – Government Affairs (June 28 or 29, finalizing soon)
- July – Inclusive Thinking w/ Julia Geisman (July 14)
- August– Advocacy (Date to be announced)
-Jennifer Pendleton, WHCM Board Chair
-Jennifer Pendleton, WHCM Board Chair
In April, I hosted a webinar for a group of about 25 women, to discuss the benefits of a WHCM membership and how to access them here, on our website. I’ll highlight the three main benefits below, but you can also watch the short video to get more details if you missed our webinar.
Hope to see you at our next virtual event!
-Rachel Renaux, WHCM Webmaster/ Board Member
Women in Healthcare Management welcomes students in all health care disciplines to attend any of its events. Students do not have to be members of WHCM to attend; most events cost a nominal fee and, in some cases, are discounted for students. WHCM also offers a discounted student membership of $0 per year (non-student membership costs $50).
With a membership base of 200+ in the greater Boston area, WHCM membership provides significant benefits to students seeking networking opportunities, job contacts, or career development. Benefits for students include the following:
● Development of long-lasting professional friendships
● Two large group meetings each year, presenting experts on topics of broad interest to members
● Workshops and small events featuring topics targeted to specific interests
● Local networking events
● An online Member Directory
● Job Alerts emailed to members
● Events specifically focused on students and career development
It’s hard to believe it has been one year since our last in-person event! We last met in Boston at our collaborative event with Medical Group Management Association (MGMA) , our first kick off for our student membership. We were so lucky to meet students, MGMA members, and have a proud showing of our WHCM members as well. I am not sure any of us saw the next year going as it has.
One year later, we cannot be sure what “in-person” events are on the horizon. To continue our work to help our members grow professionally, we are pleased to announce our plan for upcoming virtual events throughout 2021.
Our plan is based on your responses to our February membership survey; WE HEARD YOU!
Some months will be virtual, interactive events, and others may be a recommended podcast, YouTube video or Ted Talk on the issues we heard you wanted to know and learn more about.
We are making the commitment that our members will have NO COST for these events, for the remainder of 2021. We appreciate your dedication to WHCM and want to show it!
Here are the topics we are planning around for the year:
We will plan to kick off our offerings with Website Navigation and the benefits of your WHCM Membership in the month of April, so please keep an eye on your email!
As always, we appreciate you and your participation within the WHCM community; we look forward to interacting with you over the next year and networking with you.
-Jennifer Pendleton, WHCM Board Chair
In anticipation of a better year, we have kicked off our planning for WHCM in 2021.
While I am optimistic for the opportunity to hold in person events this year, we will have a “plan B” schedule in place.
Soon, you will see a survey from our Membership Team asking what virtual opportunities would benefit you and what you would be interested in seeing over the next year. I look forward to your participation so we can design plans for YOU!
We have not changed our planned forums, we will have a better idea of each of these being virtual or in person as we get closer, as well if any date changes are necessary.
I can say that I truly miss each of you! It seems so long ago when we could be introduced in person, read body language, and shake hands. While we look forward to these face to face opportunities, our primary focus remains the same, the care of our members.
We are working on making updates to our website to give you the freshest and most relevant information, and look forward to your feedback.
Please make sure that your contact information is up to date, so we are able to reach you.
I always welcome you reaching out with any questions, ideas or concerns through the website, or to me directly at jmpendleton2007@yahoo.com
I am wishing you all a Happy New Year, and look forward to continuing to meet your needs within WHCM!
-Jennifer Pendleton, WHCM Board Chair
Covid19- Career Impacts was the topic of our winter forum in December. Yes, usually it is a Fall Forum, but we have made some pivots throughout the past year and were able to coordinate an event with a different, nonetheless hopeful feel as usual.
I will say that this was the best attendance for any of our events in a BLIZZARD… We had no idea that we would be getting buried under over a foot of snow and still be able to pull this off!
Over 20 folks were able to attend our panel presentation with Zoe Brassard, HR Business Partner at Mass General Brigham/McLean Hospital; Kaylee Davis, Business Operations at Edge Health at Humana; and Joanel Key, Contract Recruiter with Shields Health Solutions. These women presented impacts the pandemic has had on hiring in a new world, their own personal experiences during the past several months, qualities to be on the lookout for in our new “state of the state”, and what we need to acknowledge going forward.
It was truly fascinating to hear how employment changes when demographic location is not a true definition of the job itself, in our new remote world, we have the opportunity to look at a far larger pool of candidates for remote working.
The messaging was clear as to what we as leaders can work on, and look for in our new applicants:
It was so clear that this change has been dramatic for us all, not just inside our new home lives of remote working, home schooling and remote learning for children, unemployment, and looking for new opportunities. These women touched on all of these, and were able to tie it back to another defining part of us, our work…
While I am the first to say “this is not our forever, it is our hold over” until numbers drop, population health increases and we identify ways to gather that will be safe- there were clear ideas that are not going away any time soon:
A huge thank you to our presenters, our forum planning committee and our leadership for putting on such a great event! We look forward to having more offerings available in the New Year.
Be safe, healthy and mindful throughout this holiday season, I am missing you all!
-Jennifer Pendleton, WHCM Board Chair
We kicked of the weekend in style on Friday, July 24! Sandi Fenwick, CEO of Boston Children’s Hospital guided us through perspectives she’s gleaned through the current “state of the state” and provided tips for current healthcare leaders, as well as those pursuing healthcare leadership.
Sandi discussed how her career informed her actions during this pandemic and how we can adapt to this new way of providing care and service to our communities. It was interesting, with everything going on in the country right now, many questions from our audience centered on diversity and inclusion. Healthcare disparities have really come to the forefront during this time of virus identification and spread, and the need for healthcare leaders to acknowledge and understand how we overcome this is key. Sandi said with diversity, she’s tried to be intentional. “We must role model as leaders. Women are skilled at being adaptive, how do we bring this into being managers?” She mentioned she’s recently been more open about her journey as a woman in what was often a room full of men, and how that shaped her understanding of privilege. The Children’s Hospital diversity committee, which was long in existence, has now become the health equity committee.
A few key takeaway nuggets included:
Sandi made such a humble point about teamwork, acknowledging her role as a generalist and surrounding herself with people who are skilled in different areas, and her role supporting and making a path for them to do what they do best. They have a 3 x a week command center meeting where section leaders highlight the top 5 things they need to share with her (planning for x and want give you a heads up, need a decision on x).
As a pioneer for female leaders in healthcare leadership, her views were awe-inspiring. As a leader of over 20,000 employees at Boston Children’s Hospital, it was refreshing and truly a learning experience to hear how she has, and continues to, work through this new world we are a part of.
Check out a recent interview she did with the Globe about children and COVID-19
-WHCM Technology Chair Rachel Renaux and Chairwoman Jen Pendleton
I recently took the opportunity to begin Brene Brown’s podcast, “Unlocking Us”, specifically the episode regarding FFT’s. What the heck is an FFT? For the purposes of this post, I will instead use TFT’s in an effort to keep the language less raw. Terrible First Times (TFT) – you know, that first time that you go through any situation, have to perform a task for the first time, that moment you are no longer the expert. That terrible feeling in the pit of your stomach that you are no longer in control and there is the opportunity that this could go less than optimally. Brown’s description of terrible first times really hit home, because I truly feel that is the world many of us have personally have lived in for the past almost 12 weeks.More
On March 4, 2020 Women and Healthcare Management and Medical Group Management Association of MA/RI were able to collaborate and put on a great event, focused on students and networking!
This co-sponsored event drew in over 70 attendees including members from both organizations, non-members, students from local universities and young healthcare professionals from nearby healthcare organizations. So many great, positive interactions were made with students and members. Many great connections were made, and followed up with on LinkedIn!
Our guest speaker, Brian Liebknecht, MHSA, CMPE (Executive Director, Proximal, LLC) shared that the key to networking is not all about who you know, but who knows you. Students were treated to a role playing exercise demonstrating how to construct their elevator speech and introductions.
We had such a great night collaborating with MGMA and developed our own new professional network that we look forward to fostering!
-Written by WHCM Chairwoman Jen Pendleton
My career in healthcare started in longitudinal qualitative research and programming, and project and data management have been foundational in all of my professional roles. In this blog I will focus on a specific application of data. Data work best when you have them, understand them, and apply them (and YES, data are plural!)
No Show Rates (NSR) are an oft-used measure of ambulatory productivity, and they vary in definition, depending upon the breadth, and depth, of an EHR’s definition and statuses of a visit. For today, let us say that a NS is a scheduled visit for which a patient does not show at the clinic within 15 minutes of the scheduled time. You can use whatever definition you want, I offer this as a starting point – there are easier to implement definitions – what is important is to be clear about the definition, and consistent about its application.
Once you have a definition of a NS, which will lead to a NSR (number of NS divided by total number of visits – be sure to use the same time period for numerator and denominator), identify a target. Do you want to reduce your NSR by a specific percentage decrease (from 28% to 20%), over a specified time (within 12 months of go-live)? Do you want to focus on Primary Care, or a specialty? If a specialty, are there patient considerations that are unique to the specialty (I do not recommend starting with psychiatry, for example)? Do you have buy-in from the clinic, both leadership and the care teams? Most importantly, if you decrease NSR, can you handle the uptick in visit volume at the site?
What will be your ROI? There are many reasons to reduce NSR (improve patient care; revenue generation associated with the visit itself, but moreso, with ancillary tests and procedures which follow a visit; optimization of staffing and capacity planning, etc.) and many approaches to do that (double or triple-booking, pre-visit contact, either automated or live contact, etc.). Some of those approaches are more labor, or technology-intensive. How do you justify the expenditure for these resource asks?
If you average 20,000 visits a week, and your NSR is 28%, that means that 5,600 visits a week are not happening. This cannot be good for patients’ health, and it is clearly not good for the staff who prepped for the visits, the offices that were open to receive those visits, and for the patients who could not get an appointment, because these other visits were scheduled. And obviously it does not help the bottom line of the institution. Now let’s say that your average visit brings in $25. You are losing $140,000 a week!
Let’s say that you want to reduce NSR from 28% to 20%. This would mean that ‘only’ 4000 visits a week would NS (20,000*20%). This would mean that across your institution, you have to prepare for 1600 more visits a week (5600-4000). Are you ready for that, from scheduling and staffing perspectives? If you generate 1600 additional visits a week, at an average of $25 per visit, you now are bringing in $40,000 a week, to offset the additional staffing needs. PLUS, the revenue from the ancillary test and procedures, which can be significant, depending upon the department.
You will never achieve a zero NSR – it is not realistic. But you can calculate what the impact of decreasing your NSR might be, in terms of revenue, and resources needed, which can help you determine if a new piece of technology to help identify patient likely to NS, is worth the investment (especially if it integrates with your EHR!) Just think, what if you could proactively identify the patients most likely to NS, and contact them in advance, or send them a ride-share, or reschedule before the visit?
The opportunities for improvement in healthcare are endless, but improving NSR can be a win for patients, providers, and institutions alike. Data are your friend – and like your friendships, the more you invest in them, the more you get from them!
Contributed by Tanya Zucconi, WHCM Steering Committee Member