Gemma Rama-Banaag, RN, BSN, MSN, MBA serves as Chief Nursing Officer for Paradise Valley Hospital.
On April 11th, Gemma Rama-Banaag will speak on a panel at Becker's Hospital Review 9th 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 11-14, 2018 in Chicago.
To learn more about the conference and Gemma's session, click here.
Question: Who or what are the disruptors that have your attention? Why?
Gemma Rama-Banaag: The continuous changes in regulatory standards are disruptors that have my attention. They have my attention because it affects quality of care and the financial health of the hospital for the most part. It is a disruptor because at the speed that these changes are being enforced, it requires for “everyone” within a healthcare organization to spend an increased amount of time in education to enforce change in practice in order to be complaint with these on-going changes.
The intent of these changes is to increase quality of care and efficiency but having to continuously learn to change one's behavior to stay compliant is time consuming and a huge stressor on staff. The stress of increased focus on learning a new technical skill, procedure and documentation just takes away attention from good-old patient care.
Q: How do you see the barrier between competitors and collaborators changing?
GR: With the standardization of healthcare practice and required reporting in this nation, there is less creativity and less interpretation on delivery of care. The boundaries through specific criterion and requirements clearly identifies scope of services, practice and expected outcomes. In 2012, I started a Network with our community partners like: skilled Nursing Facilities, Long-Term Care Facilities and Home Health Care companies to collaborate on preventing unnecessary readmission. Since then, this network has expanded it's efforts in: preventing Community Acquired Pneumonia, Facility acquired C-Diff Hospital Acquired Pressure Ulcers and Catheter Acquired Urinary Tract Infection. Since 2012, our community partners have requested our hospital to provide education and training. They have asked us for assistance and partnership to help evaluate their facility with the goal of improving their Infection control practice. This is unheard of for someone like me who started in healthcare in the ‘80’s!