Quint Studer - Hardwiring Excellence: Purpose, Worthwhile Work, Making a Difference

C OPYRIGHT I NFORMATION

Hardwiring Excellence. 2003 by Studer Group, LLC.

All rights reserved.

Perfect Bound ISBN: 0-9749986-0-5 10 / 08 07 06

Case Bound ISBN: 0-9749986-1-3 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 / 08 07 06 05 04

Library of Congress Control Number: 2004102179

eISBN: 978-1-62218-021-9

Published By:

Fire Starter Publishing

913 Gulf Breeze Parkway Suite 6

Gulf Breeze, FL 32561

Cover and Interior Designed by: Michael Verucchi

Edited by Dean Richardson

All rights reserved. Printed in the United States. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any form or by any means, or stored in a database or retrieval system without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews. Making copies of any part of this book for any purpose other than your own personal use is a violation of United States copyright laws. Entering any of the contents into a computer for mailing list or database purposes is strictly prohibited unless written authorization is obtained from Studer Group.

Quint has done what psychologists have said could never be done. He invented the engineering for hardwiring positive attitudes in hospitals that transform cultures and subsequently improve fiscal outcomes.

Jim Clifton
Chairman and CEO
The Gallup Organization

I read Hardwiring Excellence with great interest and admiriation. It is easy to forget about the human side of health care. Quints book is a real wake-up call and provides health care leaders with the very tools and ideas to be successful.

Professor Regina E. Herzlinger
Nancy R. McPherson Professor of Business Administration
Harvard Business School

Quint Studer is transforming health care through a national revolution that begins with an employee-centered culture. Hardwiring Excellence is the ultimate guide for the journey to becoming a world-class organization.

Debbie Cardello, MSN, RN, CHE
Chief Operating Officer
Robert Wood Johnson University Hospital, Hamilton, NJ

Hardwiring Excellence is unmatched in its ability to provide a step-by-step guide to sustainable improvement. Its a gift of heartwarming stories, humorous insights, and laserbeam focus on how to make a positive differencefor employees, physicians, and customers.

Michael W. Murphy
President & CEO
Sharp HealthCare, San Diego, CA

A Must Read for every CNO and nurse leader. Quint Studer maps the path from dream to reality hospitals where patients receive superior care and clinicians are valued in the way we have always deserved to be. Its all about the power of people to transform health care as we know it.

Linda Deering, RN, MSN
Vice President & Chief Nursing Officer
Delnor-Community Hospital, Geneva, IL

For every physician who wants to spend more time caring for patients and less time resolving complaints. I finally believe my ability to reward and recognize the exceptionally normal in colleagues now matches my professional training in how to diagnose the abnormal in patients. Thank you, Quint Studer.

Bill Colgate, M.D.
Medical Director, Emergency Care Center
Sarasota Memorial Hospital, Sarasota, FL

At last, a resource for finance leaders on how to create a dialogue at all levels of the organization that standardizes strong leadership, drives employee ownership for financial performance, and shares what we can learn from front-line employees who affect our financials on a daily basis.

Jim Beck
Chief Financial Officer
All Saints Healthcare, Racine, WI

I think the silo effect in health care often prevents good communication between nursing and ancillary departments to best serve patients. With coaching by Studer Group, we now have a culture where nurses and dietary staff take joint ownership for process improvement. When food scores on a med-surg unit dipped recently, instead of blaming, we added chicken soup to the menu and began rounding with a second drinks cart between meals so nurses could focus on caregiving.

Larry Pizzorni, CEC, CCE
System Director, Food and Nutrition
Blue Ridge HealthCare, Morganton, NC

D EDICATION

To Fire Starters Everywhere

T ABLE OF C ONTENTS

Connecting Back to Purpose, Worthwhile Work, and Making a Difference

How to Stay Self-Motivated

How Prescriptive To-Dos Drive Change

Five Pillars: People, Service, Quality, Finance, and Growth

How to Align Organizational Values, Goals, and Results

Using Measurement to Diagnose Problems and Improve Processes

How Measurement Aligns Leader and Employee Behavior

How to Interpret Data and Increase Patient Satisfaction Rankings

Using Service Teams to Drive Improvement

Developing Key Words at Key Times

How to Conduct Discharge Phone Calls

The Five Phases of Organizational Evolution

How to Move Operational Performance (Overcoming the Wall)

Organizing a Leadership Development Institute

Rounding for Outcomes

How to Effectively Use an Employee Satisfaction Survey

Employee Selection: Peer Interviewing and Behavioral-Based Questions

Early Retention: 30- and 90-Day Interviews with New Employees

How to Harvest Intellectual Capital with a Bright Ideas Program

Implementing an Objective and Effective Leadership Evaluation Tool

Tools to Support Leader Evaluations

Managing Up: How to Eliminate the We/They Phenomenon

Communicating: Employee Forums and Communication Boards

The Power of Storytelling

How To Maintain a Positive Relationship Compliment-to-Criticism Ratio

The Value of Reward and Recognition Teams

How to Hardwire Thank You Notes

F OREWORD

W hen I speak at health care conferences my keynote address frequently follows a futurist or two. Their talks go something like this: First, they show a graph with a line going up (thats the aging baby boomer population that will need more and more of our resources in health care).

Then they show another line going upthats the cost of providing health care, rising due to the increasing cost of new drugs and technology. Then there are the lines that go down because caregivers will be more scarce and reimbursement more challenging.

In short, they show compelling statistics for the Perfect Storm thats brewing in health careprojected to hit around 2010 or soand walk off the stage to thunderous applause, because what can we really do?

This book is about what we can do. I believe we are at the tipping point in health care. Will we feed the national crisis or bring solutions?

I elected to publish the first edition of Hardwiring Excellence in paperback, instead of hardcover, to keep the cost low, for it is my greatest hope that every leader will read it and then ask those who work with them to read it too.

I hope the stories and prescriptive tools offered within these pages inspire you and your organization to reach high on your journey to hardwiring excellencejust as so many people whom I work with have inspired me to feel purpose, worthwhile work, and making a difference. This keeps my flame alive.