Success Stories

We Must Reach Them to Teach Them

We help our health care partners to compete successfully and achieve unprecedented excellence by orchestrating change, crafting solutions and promoting cooperation. Simultaneously, we keep pace with the proliferating and constantly evolving JCAHO, CMS and State regulatory standards.

We are not satisfied with merely knowing and understanding the new JCAHO expectations. Understanding the specific roles and challenges of your leadership team is equally important, because it has been proven that we must "reach them to teach them".

Our track record, defined by performance evaluations submitted by each client, consistently demonstrates that our teaching and training abilities surpass expectations. We are pleased to share a few success stories that reflect the depth and range of our professional onsite services.

Example of On-Site Success

An internationally renowned 1250-bed, three-hospital health system in California called upon us for help. At the onset of the engagement, their chief concerns were reported as:

• "We have been so focused on restructuring, reengineering, and the financial burdens thrust upon us, that one of our three hospitals has still not fully resolved the equivalent of 55 Type I and supplemental recommendations from the survey two years ago."
• "Additionally, we have made little progress with all of the new standards / requirements that have been released since our last survey."
• "One of the hospitals in our three-hospital health system is a new acquisition and the current organization / medical staff 'fit' is not nearly as seamless as it needs to be."
• "During the past five surveys (15 years), we have always had a post-JCAHO 'Focused Visit' and we need to break that cycle now."
• "By the way, we have six months until our next survey."

Our consultant team helped generate the following victories for this valued client through on-site, day / night / week-end and off-site support to serve these two (2) acute care hospitals, Behavioral Health hospital, and over forty (40+) ambulatory care clinics.

• Survey scores of 98, 90, and 87 were achieved with no focused visits for any organization throughout the health system.
• All medical staff leadership systems (MS Bylaws, credentialing, reappointment, etc.) were fully integrated for the benefit of a singular health system.
• Universal, fully compliant nursing and patient care documentation systems were implemented throughout the health system.
• A health system-wide Human Resource orientation and competency assessment / reporting system, complete with electronic HR tracking programs, was successfully implemented.
• The original contingent of 92 staff members and department leaders "meeting" independently as part of five groups was consolidated to create an Executive Environment of Care Committee of 22 participants serving the health system. There were zero Type 1 Recommendations for the EC programs surveyed.

Example of On-Site Success

The senior leadership team of an 868-bed regional medical center called upon us for help. They had just acquired a 300+ bed medical center and wanted to integrate the cultures, programs, medical staff and general operations and concurrently prepare for the first joint JCAHO survey of both facilities as a single health care system. Their chief concerns were reported as:

• "The leaders and Medical Staff of our two facilities, located within ten blocks of each other, have been fierce competitors for over 40 years. We need to immediately address the natural cultural obstacles that have existed so that we can bring our two hospitals together as quickly and efficiently as possible."
• "While the newly acquired hospital with the past assistance of HTSI has achieved an equivalent score of 97 or better for their last three consecutive JCAHO surveys (nine years), our vulnerability is that our parent medical center has not fully resolved the 39 Type I and supplemental recommendations cited by the Joint Commission two years ago."
• "As a result of the acquisition of our partner hospital into our health care family, it was necessary to make many management and leadership changes. We need to assure that all leaders are fully trained to act in accordance with the mission, vision, and operational goals of our newly formed health care system."

Our consultant team was proud to have helped generate the following victories for this valued client through on-site, day / night / week-end and off-site support to serve what has now become the largest (1198 beds) not-for-profit hospital in the State of Florida.

• The inaugural two-hospital health system JCAHO survey resulted in only 2 recommendations, which is quite respectable for the year 2002, considering that it was approximately one year post acquisition.
• Nevertheless, the real victories for this medical center are:

• The integration of organizational culture, medical staff programs and practices, and
• The standardization of nursing and patient care documentation programs and instruments to ensure that patient centered care is offered.

• Through extensive leadership education, training and motivation, we successfully created a singular, unified "Guidance Group" to oversee the training and management of all JCAHO functions throughout the two acute care facilities, as well as the nursing home and ambulatory settings. As a result, many "communication disconnects" were eliminated.
• Consolidating and streamlining the medical staff credentialing and reappointment processes achieved cultural unification, as well as human resource and financial economies.

Example of Off-Site Success

A nationally renowned, academic Behavioral Health hospital (with multiple OP Programs) in its 45th year of operation, called upon us for help. Their chief concerns were reported as:

• "We feel that, for the most part, we have kept pace with our regulatory requirements and have done the best we can to implement new and innovative procedures and programs to meet the new JCAHO standards."
• "We would like to use HTSI to execute a mock survey, while simultaneously educating and training our management team to assure that we can sustain our level of performance independently without the use of outside consultants."

As expected, this prestigious Behavioral Health hospital received near perfect JCAHO score, with only 2 minor recommendations. However, the "real" victory is how leadership accomplished this feat.

Our nation's tragedy of September 11, 2001 and the resulting flight restrictions forced us to cancel our proposed onsite visit, scheduled for the following week. Rescheduling the impending JCAHO survey was not an option for this valued client. Not continuing to assist them was not an option for HTSI.

• On September 18-21, 2001, a total of 14 progress re-assessment / education "visits" were conducted with all scheduled management and medical staff leaders present, as originally planned. Only we were physically separated by the full width of our country.
• Speaker phone conferencing connections were successfully configured. In fact, our client participants commented on the clarity of communication, although we were 2200 miles away. Electronic document sharing, editing, and final production was accomplished through the extensive technology network utilized by HTSI to support our health care partners around the nation.

Virtual conferencing techniques enabled HTSI to fulfill the senior leadership team's goals:

• Strengthen programs, policies and documentation instruments for the administrative, patient care and medical staff teams
• Educate, train and practice drill its management and medical staff team
• Economize on the customary airline, hotel, and car-related expenses
• Save additional funds by not having to keep Garry M. Walsh fueled with all of the doughnuts he consumes on-site to maintain his high-energy enthusiasm!