Quibulah Graham, MSPH, BSN, LHRM, serves as Administrator of Allied Health and Support Services for Orlando Health.
On April 1st, Quibulah will speak at Becker's Hospital Review 10th Annual Meeting. As part of an ongoing series, Becker's is talking to healthcare leaders who plan to speak at the conference, which will take place April 1-4, 2019 in Chicago.
To learn more about the conference and Quibulah's session, click here.
Question: What one strategic initiative will demand the most of your time and energy in 2019?
Quibulah Graham: The Emergency Department continues to be challenged with unprecedented increasing volumes that are no longer just seasonal, resulting in longer wait times. Patient Flow and Throughput will demand most of our energy this year. It is a measure of how efficient we are at providing care to our patients in the Emergency Department and either moving them to the appropriate acute care inpatient areas safely or discharging them. Every less minute spent in the Emergency Department is a great win for our patients and families. We recognize that this requires transformational levels of improvement, and it is not the Emergency Department’s problem to solve alone. Our Inpatient areas contribute by developing streamlined plans of care to free up rooms. It’s essential to understand that it is an entire hospital and health care system responsibility to solve.
When patient flow and throughput are solved, all of our other strategic initiatives including the patient experience, quality, financial responsibility, and team member & physician satisfaction align and fall into place.
We pride ourselves in the level of care that our ED delivers our patients at their times of greatest need. If we are all aligned in that effort together, then we can make that transformational change.
Q: Tell us about the last meaningful interaction you had with a patient.
QG: I recently performed Administrative rounds on patients and team members over the weekend and I visited one particular patient who reminded me by our interaction that life is precious. I hesitated to go into the room at first because he was being discharged and the ambulance transporter was there to pack him up and take him home to hospice care, so I didn’t want to interrupt. I realized that I was really hesitating because his condition triggered a memory of my late mother who passed away recently on hospice care. I went in anyway, and his face lit up when I entered the room. We had the most meaningful conversation that I’d had all week while the transporter packed his things. It reminded me to take a moment each day to sit and think about what’s going on around you. To let empathy push down your selfishness and remind you that what’s important to you is just as important to others.
Q: Can you share some praise with us about people you work with? What does greatness look like to you when it comes to your team?
QG: Every success that our organization has is directly connected to the work of our team members and physicians. Greatness manifests itself with great results. When our front line team members are excited about the same things that the Executives are excited about as a result of being stakeholders in the plan, engaged, having ownership, being mindful and purposeful, as well as being intentional, then they don’t mind rolling up their sleeves when they recognize a co-worker needs help or partnering and working across departments. Embracing that the other people in the room are smarter than you and acknowledging their contribution to our great results are all a part of what greatness looks like. Each of them truly believes that they are the CEO of their patients.
Our health system CEO has a quote that he often shares with us, “There are no problems we cannot solve together, and very few we can solve by ourselves.” – Lyndon Johnson