Kathleen works hard each day to have the transport department run as smooth and efficient as possible. She helps anyone and everyone who needs help whether it be in her department or other departments. The words "it is not my job" do not ever leave her mouth. She extends herself in any way she can to help things move as smooth as possible. She stops and talks to anyone that needs her to. She always extends herself to assist anyone that needs help whether it be from helping fill something out or helps them understand something she just always is there for the staff.
Mrs. Dinora C. Cortez of BWFH Environmental Services is a hardworking and jovial person. I often see her in many places in the hospital diligently performing some cleaning tasks with a smile. One of the best parts of my day is when she arrives at the Dispatch/IS office to remove our garbage and mop our floors. we usually exchange pleasantries while she does her cleaning. Recently, my supervisor began removing old office furniture from the Dispatch office. After doing so we found a large rust stain on the floor, Ms. Dinora took it as her duty to remove the stain because she thought the stain was an embarrassment. She prides herself on doing a good job and keeping clean and tidy spaces for all of us. Over the next week she would arrive with better chemicals and cleaning equipment until she finally got up most of the rust stain. I’m sure this is a small thing in the eyes of most people but, I saw her professionalism and dedication. She is a person who cares about others and strives to do her very best. Many of my colleagues greatly appreciate her and look forward to seeing her on a daily basis. I believe people like Dinora Cortez keep Faulkner running smoothly. Ms. Dinora is a hardworking and dedicated person who gives her all with a smile. she is beloved by many for her diligence.
Nomination 1: In March 2020, when COVID-19 hit, Jim immediately developed a plan for all of us to work from home. He collaborated with all of the hospital staff (hospitalists and nurses) to develop a way to use Zoom to do our daily huddles and rounds. This was WAY before the entire globe was using Zoom to do everything. This allowed the case managers to work remotely during the height of COVID. Jim is constantly looking out for his team. He does everything in his power to make our jobs as efficient as possible. He researched and developed a new way of assessing patients called ESDP that automatically calculates patient’s risk of having discharge needs. He implemented this into Epic and it is being beta tested on 7 North right now. If it works, it will decrease some of our workload. This is completely innovative. If a patient has an ESDP score less than 10, this indicates to the case managers that they will not have discharge needs (visiting nursing or rehab) and we can write a quick note and move on to the more complex patients (of which there are MANY).
Nomination 2: I would like to take the opportunity to nominate James Grafton, MSN, MHA, RN, CCM for his leadership and innovation within the case management department. Jim is a manager who consistently raises the bar in our department and then makes sure that everyone is successful. Jim’s door is always open, and he is thoughtful and creative in helping our team to troubleshoot the most complex discharge plans. "We will figure it out" is the kind, anxiety deflating and compassionate phrase that we hear so frequently. Our team knows that he will be there to support us in any situation. His calm and understanding nature is so valuable and may only be surpassed by his brilliance as a care coordination leader. He has a knowledge base and a grasp of care coordination to navigate through the murkiest waters of a challenging case with a smile. Jim is inspirational in his desire to move our department forward, frequently talking about how he sees the future and encouraging the team to discuss ways we think the job could be done more effectively. During his brief time in leadership, our department has grown both in numbers and knowledge with his direction. He championed new approaches in managing same day joints with pre phone calls, to have a better understanding of the patient’s needs before surgery and improve the patient experience. He listened to staff as they tried to find ways to optimize time with complex patients. He then researched best practice nationwide and developed an ESDP (early screening for discharge planning) module that is currently in its pilot phase. Jim does not silo his creative approaches but always seeks a larger audience to share his knowledge with by engaging leadership throughout Mass General Brigham. Jim brings an excitement and joy to any task he undertakes, and it is contagious. You want to be a part of his team and see what will be accomplished because he makes you feel like great things can happen. Whenever I'm asked about working in case management I say, "I love my job!" and James Grafton is one of the major reasons why. Thank you for the opportunity to praise a true leader and friend.
Michelle is an exceptionally hard worker. She is always up for the challenge and willing to help the department in any way possible. Since returning to the Operating Room she has continued working without missing a beat. From 6:30 am to 2:30 pm she is working non-stop. Turning over rooms, which consist of sweeping/mopping floors to delivering the case carts used in the cases to the dirty room. Michelle continuously getting beds, equipment, running to the lab with specimens to her friendly acknowledgement of everyone she comes in contact with. People will say it’s her job, I say we should have more people like Michelle who love her job and does a great job at it with no complaints. Michelle is deserving of this award and I wish I could do more. When we were down to one ORA in the operating room this week, Michelle picked up the slack like she had an entire crew. We brought in two workers from EVS, and she single handedly showed them the ropes to assist with turn-over in the Operating Room. Without Michelle we definitely would have had a major issue with getting patients turned over.
Nancy is the Nutrition Clinic coordinator who goes above and beyond to not only deliver exceptional care and medical nutrition therapy to her patients but devotes time to educate our Faulkner community with various articles and timely advice on how to eat more healthy. She consistently scores 10/10 on the NRC patient survey and the patients are so impressed with the care she delivers that they take the time to write beautiful sentiments about her. She consistently delivers the highest care and is always willing to do more for the BWFH community. Nancy didn’t skip a beat when COVID hit and immediately started telehealth to continue to care for her patients remotely. As a result, her outpatient volume did not suffer during COVID. Her success in her role, and word of mouth of her performance have led to multiple follow-up appointments and a growing patient base. She receives numerous patient comments on the NRC survey. This most recent NRC patient review of Nancy is the norm: "Our experience with nutritionist Nancy Oliveira was exceptional. She is a role model for all aspiring medical practitioners at all levels with her wonderful demeanor, obvious intelligence, ability to listen carefully and respond well to all questions and most importantly provide superb advice. She is a true professional."
Katy has been an enthusiastic champion in our department in trying to understand our quality measures through an equity lens. She started by looking at our CCM measure (Care Continuum) from MassHealth which allowed us to understand if we had disparities in care by race, ethnicity, gender and homeless status in terms of patients having appropriate follow up and connections to primary care providers in the community. Katy's breakdown of this data has allowed us to hone in on specific populations for targeted communication and improvement initiatives. From there, Katy has broken down all the quality measures she reports on, including ED throughput, sepsis, heart failure and care continuum, by REAL indicators and provided feedback on this data to local leaders. Katy continues to figure out the best ways to understand our quality metrics through an equity informed lens. Most recently, she broke down our heart failure metrics by REAL indicators so that we can begin to understand if there are discrepancies in care for indicators such as medications prescribed at discharge and timely follow up appointments. She is now taking the next step to cross reference the CMS billing data we receive with Epic demographic data to look at readmissions for the heart failure population. This data is publicly reported and a metric that we have not explored historically through an equity lens. As we haven’t previously explored our data in this way, Katy is paving the way for to include equity indicators in our data moving forward by being thoughtful in how the data is presented and working towards understanding best practices in explaining and understanding what this new cut of data is telling us about our patient population.
Vanessa typically doesn't speak the loudest in the meeting but her voice often carries the most weight. I have had the pleasure of working with Vanessa for several years and on several projects wherein she has maintained a steady and crucial emphasis on the need to make sure the programs available to treat psychiatric illness are available *to everyone.* She understands access and has been the critical voice to include this emphasis in the structure and design of projects. She has advocated for communities of color, the LGBQA community, non-English speakers, communities of older people—there is no virtue signaling. Instead she fundamentally believes in an inclusive approach to healthcare that emphasizes common humanity and the need to enfranchise those who have been lost due to the blind or bigoted eye of society. Speaking personally, her own ethos has had a profound influence on my own thinking, and I consider my growth in this area to be attributable to her example. She certainly warrants the award as she continues to be a mentor by example to all of us. Vanessa has infused the workplace with greater awareness, sensitivity and transpersonal identification. She is an inclusive team builder and just a wonderful person. Vanessa maintains the diversity, equity and inclusion principles as part of the active orientation of our department and helps us all to see what we may not be sensitive enough to see.
Jessica is all off the Pillars of Excellence, because what she tried to achieve essentially falls into every category. There are definitely is not enough words to describe Jessica. The description above that you have provided could only describe one person and that is Jessica.
Commitment to an Exceptional Patient Experience - providing quality, coordinated and compassionate care: She not only ensure that the patient has had a great experience with the psychiatrics service that Faulkner provides patients, she ensures the patient is able to obtain all the services they are eligible for.
Optimizing Collaboration - among and across individuals, teams and the system: She is the number one person that is for the system, team and individual. She helps everyone in the department with any need or question they have. Jessica always seems to have an answer or she will find an answer for you. There is no one that works harder for the system to make sure everything and every department involved with our department is serviced. She really does more than what her job description is. She is the GO TO PERSON in every sense of the phrase.
Enhancing Efficiency - achieving outstanding outcomes with resourceful approaches: This all could be Jessica and more. She manages to notice things we notice while doing our job and actually finds solution for them to make workflow move faster in an efficient way. When the team is able to work and do their job in efficient way then there is less frustration. This all goes hand in hand what she is able to do with our workflow for us to better our ability to do our job. While doing our job and many other jobs for the team she finds ways to increase our ability to be more resourceful when obtaining information needed for patients.
Advancing Innovation and Progress - leading the development and implementation of new ideas: Jessica has been leading the team in progress and development. Having a new computer system that every day we are learning new ways to do thing and access new information form the system. She is also one of the leaders in the development of the system and making it user friendly for us to be able to do our job better. Jessica is always coming up with new ideas of how to make the system we use more efficient for our patient care. Jessica number one focus is how to be able to do a better job, be more efficient the system and make workflow more efficient for everyone.
Fostering Community - improving the health and wellbeing of our colleagues and neighbors: Jessica is always working while doing her job in bettering the health and wellbeing of everyone around her. She is always there to assist, advise, offer giving her experience and knowledge to anyone that asks or that she feels might need more information or help. Doctors and upper management and even hospital leaders come to her for advise on issues in the department.
Integrating Diversity, Equity and Inclusion - engaging each other with intention and enriching our work environment: Jessica always insures there are meetings and discussion going on when every any topic comes up she makes sure to mention it and open it up for discussion. Any time there has ever been a conflict or any type of issue I do notice Jessica looking into it and trying to find a solution. She has included everyone in and made sure all daily topics are covered and discussed.
Jessica and I started basically around the same time working in the psychiatric department. Jessica has done her job and a lot more. Since I have been part of the department going on 8 years now there have been many changes. We have lost staff members due to them moving on and gained many new staff members which then leave again. During this time, Jessica has always stepped into the position of covering everyone. The staff member of team could be a supervisor or a psychiatrics triage staff: Jessica steps into that role and does both jobs and recently has been doing the job of 3 staff members. For a couple of years now there has been a lot of change of staff members in the department which Jessica always steps in and covers job tasks or shifts including her own work. She makes sure it is all done. Most recently we had 2 members of our staff leave at the same time. Jessica is covering the supervisor’s job and the triage staff member job, while doing her job and making sure all shifts are covered if not, she covers the shift. Jessica is also trying to hire new staff members and working on making our new workflow easier for the psychiatric department to use. While she is doing all this everyone is still coming to her for advice concerning the unit, emergency room, social workers, upper management even leaders of the facility. Jessica always makes time to assist everyone. She has never said "I do not know." She always helps or says "I’ll let you know" because she is trying to find an answer for you. I cannot go over the last 8 years because it would be too long and much more than 250 words. I am sure you understand how valuable she is to the team, psychiatric department and to the Mass General Brigham system. She is what you want every staff member to be.
Ada has been an indispensable part of the second floor kitchen. This year has presented us with unprecedented staff vacancies and increased work load due to high census and supply chain issues. Many of the staff are working several extra shifts along with tolerating continual products shortages which can create frustration and fatigue. Ada has tirelessly worked with the kitchen staff to encourage teamwork on a level that has rarely been seen. She is constantly encouraging, supporting and working side by side with her staff. She has worked many extra shifts and has continually come in early to make sure the staff is supported and strengthened. I wish I could put into words the difference that Ada has made to the second floor kitchen staff, but it is hard to measure or explain the level of calm, consistency and support that she has provided and still provides. Much of the staff volunteer to stay an extra shift to fill a vacancy just because they want to help Ada as she works to feed the patients. In addition, through Ada’s role modeling of doing anything that is needed to get the job done, she has inspired the staff to extend themselves more than they ever have, thus causing them to grow as employees and as individuals. As I stated above, Ada has worked many, many extra shifts. She has worked as supervisor and as fsw at the same time. How has she done this? By working twice as hard as her job should require her to work. She will instruct and lead the staff, along with filling plates of food while checking trays. The second floor kitchen is not the only place that Ada has extended herself. While the cafe was short a manager, Ada helped stepped in to support catering events and opening the cafe when needed.
When we talk about Fostering Community as a Pillar of Excellence Award category, there is no team that meets the criteria any more than Brigham and Women’s Faulkner Hospital’s Community Health and Wellness team made up of Tracy Sylven and Katie Plante. Amazing isn’t a strong enough word to describe the work they do. Perhaps life changing and life-saving are better words to describe the core of their work because what they provide to local community members helps meet some of the most basic human needs of food, access to medical care and a whole host of other community resources aimed at treating people, families and communities. From creative programming aimed at getting kids to eat healthy meals at the Manning Elementary School or offering programming that helps seniors remain in their homes as long as possible, the services they provide truly cover the entire life span.
Since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, I would suggest that there are no other individuals that have directly impacted more lives than these two remarkable employees. From helping to set up COVID-19 testing sites in the community, to coming up with the idea to screen for social determinants of health and expand resources at those testing sites to include food, voter registration, diapers and so much more. They have single-handedly secured funding for and helped moved tens of thousands of pounds of healthy food to people in need, found a way to get local organizations to donate hot meals that they then handed out on the side of the road and worked with people across the system to get the community van into our service area each week where COVID-19 vaccinations could be given, more resources coordinated and more lives changes for the better. When I look at the whole of this work, I'm most impressed that the communities that they continue to serve are the ones hardest hit by COVID, food insecurity, homelessness and so many other factors that translate to poor health conditions. They have served people with compassion without regards to their status in the community, income level or education. They not only talk about treating people in a fair, equitable and just way, they live it each day they're in the community.
This team includes the BWFH Speech Pathology department and the BWFH Nutrition Services department who collaborated to implement the International Dysphagia Diet Standardization (IDDSI) diets. This was a year-long project to standardize dysphagia diets to improve safety and quality of the foods provided to patients with swallowing difficulties. This project was multi-phased and required collaboration with food services to standardize recipes of dysphagia foods, interdisciplinary training (food service, nursing, providers, etc), programming changes to EPIC and the foodservice menu software and collaboration with all facilities within MGB to implement it system-wide.
By providing IDDSI diets to our patients with dysphagia, we are providing safer care since the foods are prepared and served in a consistent, standardized way so there can be no risk of choking or aspirating.
BWFH was a leader within MGB in implementing IDDSI throughout the system—leading the way with the EPIC changes and acting as a resource to other institutions.
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