Your Quarterly News & Updates |
|
MCACHE provides a local forum for the open exchange of information and viewpoints. In doing so, we help enhance the decision-making expertise and professional growth of the professionals with a major responsibility for healthcare management in southeastern Michigan and northwest Ohio – all while promoting the mission of the American College of Healthcare Executives (ACHE).
MCACHE is resending the newsletter because there is an update to the President's message. Have a fabulous weekend!
|
|
At this time of year, there is usually much anticipation for the kids to go back to school, college football to kick-off and the last days of summer celebrated over Labor Day weekend. This year, not everyone is so eager, or even allowed, to crowd into a football stadium with thousands of fans. School classrooms will look and sound very different than last Fall as remote learning and social distancing are enhanced. Despite all this change, the kids are anxiously awaiting to see their friends again. Their resilience is admirable, and we should be encouraged by their spirit despite all the disruptions.
Our journey of lifelong learning continues. As such, ACHE has also been diligently working to provide updates and new templates for virtual Face-to-Face (F2F) education events. Our ACHE Regional Director – Phillip Shaffer has been sending weekly updates as the virtual learning continues to evolve. MCACHE’s Program Committee has been working through these new options to provide our members with the most opportunity to acquire virtual F2F credits while still offering trending topics most relevant to our Chapter. Please continue to look for the latest updates in the MCACHE Executive Bulletin emailed weekly.
Our sponsors play an important role in our programming as well and on behalf of the Executive Board, I would like to thank all of the MCACHE 2020 Sponsors for their continuing support. We look forward to implementing some innovative ideas with you to maximize our partnerships throughout 2021.
Thank you to all of our colleagues, families and friends who work and support the healthcare industry across various sectors. The road to recovery may be long but together our vigilance will persevere and we will come out stronger than we thought possible.
Stay strong, stay healthy and stay positive.
Michelle Hornberger, MHSA, FACHE
President, MCACHE
|
|
Thomas B. Lanni, Jr., FACHE
Regent for Michigan and Northwest Ohio
I am hoping this message finds everyone in good health and taking time to enjoy the summer. As we continue to deal with COVID-19, I wanted to welcome and congratulate a group of individuals. Since the start of the year, our region (Michigan & NW Ohio) has seen 111 new members join ACHE. We welcome you, and if you have any interest in participating in your local chapters, please feel free to reach out. I would also like to congratulate our new fellows (5) and recertified fellows (14) through July. We appreciate your continued dedication to your profession and spending the time to achieve this honor.
I would also like to take the opportunity to thank those members who took the time to fill out a nomination form for this year’s Regent Awards. It speaks volumes that you took the time to recognize one of your peers for their commitment and dedication to their profession. I look forward to reviewing all of them soon.
Virtual Face-to-Face Credits
In June and July, ACHE held several seminars with Regents and chapter Presidents to outline the opportunity to attend and host Virtual Face-to-Face (F2F) credits for our members. Virtual F2F programming will be offered until 12/31/20 and will be evaluated for 2021 in the coming months. Virtual F2F Courses are being offered on a variety of timely healthcare leadership topics and consist of pre-course surveys and assessments, discussion board conversations, and scheduled virtual live sessions. You can find more information on ACHE F2F courses following this link https://www.ache.org/learning-center/education-and-events/virtual-face-to-face-courses.
In addition, ACHE has worked on a program to allow chapters to offer F2F credits. Based on the feedback from Regents and chapters, ACHE has increased the number of hours of virtual F2F credit chapters that can offer via virtual panel discussion templates from six hours to nine hours through 12/31/2020. The F2F virtual courses are a great opportunity for those members seeking fellow status or recertifying.
ACHE will continue to offer its free webinar series for 1 ACHE Qualified Credit Hour. Please make sure to take the opportunity to review these offerings.
Exam Authorized and Recertification Extensions
Individuals who are currently Exam Authorized with an application expiration date occurring in 2020 have been extended and will expire on December 31, 2020.
Recertification deadlines have been extended for the 2019 and 2020 classes. Each recertification class must have met all the requirements, submitted their application, and paid the recertification fee by the new deadlines.
· 2019 Recertification Class Extension is Dec. 31, 2020
· 2020 Recertification Class Extension is March 31, 2021
COVID-19 Resources
The online COVID-19 Resource Center is updated regularly with new COVID-19 Front-Line Leader Series webinars and podcasts, along with numerous other free resources for healthcare leaders. Please feel free to review and share this information.
|
|
This Issue's Theme:
The Work-From-Home Experiment
|
|
The impact of the COVID-19 pandemic has caused drastic disruption to the workforce all over the world. In a matter of weeks, the global social distancing response has pushed a large segment of knowledge workers out of the office and into the home, leading some companies to find themselves with a fully physically dispersed workforce for the first time. For many companies, this drastic shift to remote teams is a new experiment that represents a very different way of working. Onsite meetings have been replaced by video-calls while popping by someone's desk has been replaced by Skype messages. Additionally, employees had to quickly shift to relying on communication technologies to perform their jobs while dealing with home environment disruptions.
Despite these challenges, a survey conducted back in April by Adam Ozimek, Upwork Chief Economist suggests that "the remote work experiment has proceeded better than expected from the perspective of working conditions. There have been more upsides than downsides, and there is potential for improving productivity."
Similarly, researchers at Harvard and NYU have collected data from across three continents to find out more about how working remotely has changed the way we communicate and collaborate within organizations. Their study mainly focused on the pattern of digital communication, such as emails and video meetings, as a result of needing to compensate for face-to-face interactions that would normally take place in the workspace.
Here are some of the main take-away’s from the study that I found interesting:
- The number of meetings per person per day increased by 13%
- The number of attendees per meeting increased by 14%
- Average duration of meetings decreased by 20%
- Having more frequent and shorter meetings, with more attendees lead to a reduction o 12% in the total number of hours employees spend in meetings per day.
- Internal emails increased by 5%
- Average number of recipients included on emails increased by 3%
- Average workday span increased by 8%
The results of this study suggest that employees are expanding both the frequency and the scope of their communication as they are adding more attendees to meetings and more recipients to emails. This suggests employees are communicating with more colleagues in a shorter amount of time and have a much broader message to communicate or decision they want to make.
Reflecting back on my experience at Michigan Medicine, it seems that much of what the study found is similar to what we are experiencing. Just before the official lockdown, the Department of Continuous Improvement started encouraging employees to work remotely as much as possible. We've been working remotely ever since and are likely to continue for many more months to come.
Though working remotely was not previously common for our team, I believe that we may have been one of the areas that were best able to adapt to the change. Our job is to help clients overcome barriers and issues, improve processes, and embrace change. We are familiar with ambiguity and uncertainty as a part of our everyday jobs. Communication is also critical for us to be successful. While we have always had processes in place to help us connect and communicate, COVID-19 pushed us to another level.
Within days of starting to work remotely:
- Team members relocated office equipment from their cubes (e.g., laptop docks, dual monitors, office chairs) into their new workspace – their home
-
Huddles became more frequent. Our rooms have been replaced with Zoom and our wall visuals have moved to Google Jamboard
-
Quick walk-ins into a colleague's cube have been replaced with Slack, email and other instant messaging applications
- We use “lunch and learn” meetings to discuss technical issues or share any new tools and methods teams are identifying
- Meetings have become larger on some projects as leadership quickly realized that decisions needed to happen fast in order to respond to the urgent need of our patients and staff. For example, several meetings with individual stakeholders were replaced by larger, more collaborative meeting where everyone heard the same message at the same time
- Our happy hours have become more frequent, more attended, have moved to Zoom, and have helped us get to know each other on a much deeper level. While I don't believe anyone in our team believes virtual happy hours can fully replace in-person human interaction, I think we were pleasantly surprised by some of the benefits we started to see. Our team made happy hours more frequent to give team members opportunities to connect. We also noticed that we started to have a larger number of attendees, some of them even from other areas of the institution. It may have been due to the ease of joining but I do believe team members especially miss each other and the connection with individuals outside of their home.
During happy hours we typically
- Have a beverage with us
- Make fun of each other's Zoom background
- Discuss funny ways our meetings get interrupted by children, pets, other
- Have break-out sessions within a larger zoom meeting with guided with random
- questions that help teams connect at a much more personal and deeper level
- Discuss how COVID-19 is affecting us and our families, etc.
- Share tips on how to improve our experience both in our personal life and at work
This is an unprecedented experiment for all of us. Some industries and individuals have been hit harder than others. We did adapt within our department but front line caregivers have not had this luxury. Continuous Improvement and probably other “knowledge” departments at Michigan Medicine, would agree with Adam Ozimek’ findings: "the remote work experiment has proceeded better than expected." It would be very interesting to me to hear this story from our front line care givers’ perspective and how the shift to remote work has impacted their work. Perhaps that can become the next theme article for our newsletter. My wish to everyone out there: Take care of yourselves, take care of others and have hope that things will get better.
References:
DeFilippis, E; Impink, S.M.; Singell M.; Polzer, T.J; Sadun, R. (July 2020) COLLABORATING DURING CORONAVIRUS: THE IMPACT OF COVID-19 ON THE NATURE OF WORK, NBER WORKING PAPER SERIES. Link: https://www.nber.org/papers/w27612. Reviewed on: 8/7/2020
|
|
We Need You: TCF Field Hospital
CEO Reflection
|
|
It was late March and Lynn Torossian, founder and chief executive coach at LMT Advisors, was on a call with a surgeon client who was being called in to do additional clinical and administrative work related to the pandemic. Torossian recalls joking with the client, “Thankfully I don’t have skills that could be used in COVID,” to which her client said, “Don't be so sure!”
Lo and behold, days later, Torossian would receive a call from her former boss, Bob Riney, Henry Ford Health System COO. The State needed help getting the TCF Field Hospital up and running. At this time the Army Corps of Engineers were called in to stand up the facility but the expertise of setting up and running hospital operations was needed.
When answering that call from Riney, Torossian expressed initial concerns, stating “The thought of going into the fire was overwhelming . . . [when] she had protected herself mostly from the public.” She was torn, wanting to be in service to the community, and yet fearing the unknown – one thing led to the next and Torossian found herself on the phone with Tricia Foster, COO of the State of Michigan.
Torossian recalls Foster explaining to her “We like strong women. We hear you’re a strong woman who knows how to run hospitals . . . we need you.”
The very next morning, after Torossian answered that initial call, she answered phone calls after phone calls with State leaders, regional hospital leaders, Michigan National Guard, and more. Operationalizing the field hospital for Torossian was done so virtually while she partnered with an onsite operations leader, Marine Dan Medrano, a system executive from McLaren and an onsite clinical leader, Dr. David Strong, a physician leader from Henry Ford Health System, along with many others.
The TCF field hospital was fully operational only 10 days from that initial call. Torossian remarked “We were so focused on the singular goal of getting the hospital up and operational to decompress the local hospitals . . . everyone saw the goal, knew the goal, and knew their part.” She found there was “not a lot of wasted energy or time.” If we made a mistake it was identified quickly, and appropriate corrections made. When we had a success we celebrated quickly, and moved on.
Most of us know the course from there for the TCF field hospital and the eventual demobilization. The remarkable context to this story is what took place behind the scenes. Most of the people that worked on this endeavor never met in person, had not worked together previously and wouldn’t even know what each other looked like. Torossian said “we didn’t have that time to get to know each other” at the onset and noted they joked about the “voices behind the curtain”.
As Torossian reflected back on the spring events while being interviewed after the dust had settled in July, she identified the phenomenal lessons in leadership presented. One of these is the overarching role of the leader to “create a vision, enlist others in that vision, listen to others’ perspectives and remember that no matter the level or role [someone held], their perspective matters.” She said it was “not that the CEO was any more important than anyone. It was just that we had different jobs to do.”
These key lessons and findings are the marks of a true leader, which Torossian would know something about being in the business of an executive coach. Prior to becoming a coach, Torossian had started her career in healthcare finance before moving to operations in 2006. From there she transcended the career ladder to President and CEO at Henry Ford West Bloomfield hospital from 2013 to 2019.
As advice for those emerging leaders, Torossian appropriately shared, “Accept new opportunities people present to you.” Answer the call.
|
|
Hala S. Asfar
Antonio Avant, PhD, MBA
Chauny Barnes-Sailor
Dany J. Beaupre, Jr.
Logan Bryer, MHA
Joe Cafferty
Jasmin Carlton, MHSA
John Chandler
Sirfornia Deasfernandez
Erin Dobbs
Deann A. D'Onofrio, RN, BSc
Trent Dziurman
Roschelle Y. Frazier
Robert Guha, MBA
Brian Halloran
Ewa Hasiec
Jozette Hughes, RN
Nadir Ijaz
Nailah Jinnah
Diane J. Jones, PhD, PA-C
Waleed Lakhani, MSW
Dana R. Lasenby
Andrew Mason
Erin McElroy
Karen Meader
Andrea Merritt
Christina Michajlyszyn, DScPT
Donny Milosevski
Shalita N. Moore
Adijat Ogunyemi, DSW
Tema Pefok
Chad Selmek, MHA
Brian V. Scheid
Stephanie L. Stokes
Dareisha G. Taylor
Michelle Trzin, MHSA
Tiffany L. Tscherne, FACHE
Ashley D. Van Slembrouck
|
|
Thank you to our MCACHE 2020 Sponsors |
|
We want to hear from you… If you have suggestions or story ideas for the newsletter, please contact:
Chairs:
Website:
Social Media Coordinators:
Contact MCACHE at: mcache@achemail.net
Stay Connected
Are any of your colleagues not receiving MCACHE Chapter emails? Please advise them to add mcache@achemail.net to their safe senders or safe recipients list.
Please Note: Internal corporate systems may still cause our emails to be caught in spam filters, in which case they need to have mcache@achemail.net added to their "good list".
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
