Continuing Leadership Rounding During the Pandemic Has Been Priceless!
Recently Prerna Kahlon (VP of Quality and Process Improvement at Grady Health System in Atlanta, GA) and Dan Lane (Quality Director & Privacy Officer of Mercy Medical Center in Canton, OH) presented to a group of Care Logistics partners on how they’ve managed to keep senior leaders engaged with front-line staff in the face of the COVID-19 pandemic. They’ve worked to adapt their Operational Rounding process to fit the realities of the times, and they’ve had some big wins along the way. Sure, there have been challenges to migrating a fully in-person weekly process to be mostly to entirely virtual, but there have been some vital benefits of sticking with it.
At Grady, Prerna says that they have been able to “continue making improvements for our three focus areas of Patient Experience, Quality / Safety, and LOS / Patient Progression”. During the pandemic, they have launched a weekly “Model for Improvement” series to “coach up” front-line leaders, coaches, and Senior Leaders and “get back to the basics” of the program.
Due to the physical distancing restrictions, they started to use Webex to adapt their program. They set up a master Webex for briefing and debriefing, and then each Coach set up a Webex for each rounding session with front-line leaders. This has empowered Senior Leaders to remain engaged with staff at the front line. One of the unforeseen benefits of the entirely virtual process has been that it has eliminated travel time for senior leaders and coaches, which has allowed for more time for the virtual rounding with staff.
Additionally, it has helped maintain a focus on continuous improvement and allowed front-line staff to have an avenue for sharing progress and barriers. Continuing Operational Rounding “has continued to help with senior leader visibility, which is important for any initiative and any institution”.
At Mercy, Dan shared that the Operational Rounding program has been a big hit with their organization. Their infection control rates are now equal to or better than national benchmarks. He joked that “when we started Operational Rounding in late 2017, most staff thought it would be over by Easter of 2018, but here we are still going strong in 2020, all the way through the pandemic”. The program has allowed Senior Leaders to establish new relationships with front-line staff, and it has engaged them “outside their offices”.
“When we started Operational Rounding in late 2017, most staff thought it would be over by Easter of 2018, but here we are still going strong in 2020, all the way through the pandemic.
Since late March, Mercy has been doing virtual briefing and debriefing. Then, senior leaders have been going physically to the units to conduct rounding.
For the first few months, senior leaders were given talking points on the latest updates regarding COVID-19, PPE, surgeries, patient volumes, and surge plans to discuss during rounding with front-line leaders and staff. Senior leaders then engaged bedside staff and nurse leaders on how they could support staff during the pandemic. “This communication to staff about what was going on during the pandemic was priceless”. Dan explained that at Mercy:
“They have so many forms of communication… but it was the rounding where senior leaders were able to talk to the staff, and see what was going on, get feedback on what they needed still, and let them know what the hospitals plans are were going forward.
At both Grady and Mercy, keeping the senior leadership engaged at the front-line staff and leader level enabled their organizations to keep the lines of communication open and keep on improving in the face of the pandemic.