Save Revenue and Lead Your Employees Through the Pandemic and Beyond

By Sybil A. Graham

This book was developed at the request of our customers who lead the delivery of care to health and senior care patients, and residents. No health or senior care investor, Governance Board member, C-Suite Executive or Minister of Health could have predicted or budgeted for this catastrophic Global Pandemic and its continuous damage, costs and variants. No precedent, play book or manual exists to help with all of the challenges and issues that have been created. The Pandemic seems like a surreal nightmare though your return to work despite your physical and mental exhaustion daily and you see this is very real. Your employees face their issues, but you as their leader must maintain positivity and resiliency, maintain optimism, production and support.
Your parents wanted you to be an attorney or a veterinarian, but you wanted to choose your own profession and work in healthcare. You were a highly successful senior executive before the Pandemic struck. Now you are being pulled in multiple directions and are still being held accountable for accomplishing your job objectives.
The primary purpose of this book is to show you that you are not alone, and your stresses and challenges are being felt in all health and senior care organizations. It is to provide you with proven, credible solutions that have shown to work but you must be open-minded to change and committed to a new way of leading. Doing so will enable you and your employees along with your organization to become stronger and more resilient.
The information was gathered through global interviews, focus groups, direct care givers, suppliers and vendors. Extensive research was also conducted and the book's contents was tested for credibility in global e-conferences, and round tables, but most importantly through the positive results of numerous solutions that were implemented by our customers.
This book is not political, nor does it discuss the vaccinations. Because the subject matter and the topic are so intense a few relevant cartoons have been included for some levity. This is in no way meant to be disrespectful or to minimize the stresses and challenges you face daily. Give yourself a long overdue break and buy the book

• Language: English
• Publisher: iUniverse
• Release date: Apr 24, 2022
• ISBN: 9781663234179

Book preview

Copyright © 2022 Sybil A. Graham.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping or by any information storage retrieval system without the written permission of the author except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

iUniverse

1663 Liberty Drive

Bloomington, IN 47403

www.iuniverse.com

844-349-9409

Because of the dynamic nature of the Internet, any web addresses or links contained in this book may have changed since publication and may no longer be valid. The views expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Getty Images are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

Certain stock imagery © Getty Images.

ISBN: 978-1-6632-3416-2 (hc)

ISBN: 978-1-6632-3417-9 (e)

iUniverse rev. date: 04/21/2022

To

all health and eldercare first responders, workers, their

families, the corporations and the people who support these

people in their incredibly tireless, dedicated, heroic daily

efforts to meet and surpass the challenges of this global

pandemic and the changes it has and continues to bring.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

To my late parents, Natalie and Jack Graham, and the late Elaine and Seymour Kottler, who all pushed me my entire life to write and always do better.

Thank you to my editor, Betty Carlin, for your incredible knowledge, professionalism, and unwavering patience, especially during challenging times. This book would not have been possible without you.

Thank you to Vonnie Coleman, Illustrator and Marketing Director SSD/SNO, for the book’s cover design and illustration.

A special thank you to Ken Schwinn who gave me my first opportunity to author and publish in a literary publication called, Muse and Media.

A special thank you to Rachel Guido deVries who as a published poet and author, educator and mentor, believed in me when I was 18. She lifted me up, and delicately encouraged me to find my dreams and make them happen.

A tremendous thank you to Michael Keosky. For decades he has been my professional career and life coach, supporter, and incredible friend, who tirelessly has taught and still teaches me executive protocol, conflict resolution and patience in business.

Thank you to all the healthcare employees, executives, investors, Governance Board members, patients, residents, and their families who shared their candid, thoughtful insights with me.

It is with sincere gratitude that I also thank all of the people who provided support at different times and shared their expertise to make this book possible:

Stephen Bennett

Chris Gino

Bruce MacFarlane

Susan Joffe, JD

Maxine Goldsmith, RN CCM

Patt Reed

Jeffrey Gene Kaplan, MD

Brad Arms

Hera Cohn Haft, MD, PSY.D

Henry Eli Jacobs, MD, JD

Marcus Sloan, MD. PSY.D

Adia Paatel

Eric Lindholm

Robert Gaines

Ann Kennedy, USA Rotary Chair of World Polio Committee

RC deWinter

Ahmil Kassa MD, National Health System UK (NHS)

Henrik Phillips, National Health System UK (NHS)

David Holmes, Canada National Health

Benjamin Golinsky, MD Israel National Health Coalition

Abjar Kahlil, United Arab Emirates Healthcare

The Global Health Leaders Media Council

France Media, Inc.

Aaron Hurwitz

Eugene Hopkins

Holby City Television Series, BBC Productions UK

Lastly, a big thank you to Macy Mae who now understands that a day at home is not a play date despite the barking, very despondent looks, whining and toys at my feet. I owe you many adventures.

QUOTES

"There are many days I would like to have a

meteor come screaming towards this Earth

and take me away from these surreal times."

- Anonymous Healthcare Worker

Oh, mercy, mercy, me. Things just aren’t what they used to be…

- Marvin Gaye

Treat me like a human being, although I long to be a superhero,

Empathize with me as I charge through unknown

territories but all too familiar deep waters.

Understand I signed up to help others but look

at how they keep coming without end.

Know I want to do a good job and meet your expectations.

Don’t feel sorry for me.

Recognize that I am human, not a machine.

I strive for perfection and approval.

See that we are more alike than different and just so, so tired.

Like you, I end each day beyond exhaustion

yet do it all over again tomorrow.

- Sybil A Graham

CONTENTS

Preface

Introduction

1   The Research And Interviews

2   Mandated Changes And Unrealistic Accountability

3   Changes And Retention Issues Among Leaders And Their Employees

4   Culture Change And Employee Engagement

5   Engaging Employees To Identify Cost Drivers And Cost Savers

6   Other Ways to Save Revenue During the Pandemic and Beyond

7   Engaging Employees To Improve Vendor Relationships, Quality And Costs

8   Multi-Generation Employees And Customers

9   When A Significant Organizational Change Is Planned And Cannot Be Shared With Most Of The Employees

Final Thoughts

Appendix

Resources

Song And Cartoon Credits

PREFACE

The purpose of this book is to illustrate through valuable experience how leaders, investors, senior team members, and executives globally can save revenue during these completely unprecedented times by using the intellectual capital of their employees within their health and eldercare organizations. Even the patients, residents, and customers have valuable ideas on streamlining processes and saving costs without sacrificing quality. Additionally, health and eldercare organizations are dealing with the changing demographic values of multi-generational employees, patients, residents, and customers. The loss of revenue from the global pandemic, along with the never-ending variants, was unforeseen. There was absolutely no way to predict the expenses associated with treatment, lingering side effects, amount of medical equipment needed, amount of space required, and then horribly, the storage of the bodies of all who succumbed to the pandemic. We all lost colleagues, associates, employees, friends, and family members.

Decisions about space accommodations, quarantines, dealing with other illnesses, elective surgeries, and neonatal care all had to be made. Every facility in the world has been and continues to be impacted by this situation. Further, while direct care employees are being cut to save budgets and revenue, other organizations can’t find enough trauma nurses or support providers to meet the demand. Existing employees are face exhaustion and burnout, which affects care quality, morale, and employee retention. Many professionals have left the field while others considering a medical career are hesitant, creating a shortage of qualified employees.

Under the circumstances, how is this supposed to be fixed operationally and from a revenue management perspective? There are no quick solutions. We know everything is changing like never before. We did not expect to be slammed like a bulldozer and knocked off our feet from a global pandemic. We knew that the way we had been doing things in the past in health and eldercare was working to a point. Still, there was not enough strength or resiliency to easily beat this type of continuous catastrophic event impacting so many areas of health and senior care. We knew beforehand that we would have to accommodate demographic and multi-generational changes but thought we had some time.

This pandemic has taught and continues to teach us many lessons. A number of issues existed prior to the Pandemic and were not administrative priorities or dealt with. The band-aid patchwork approach will not work. We know that a new transformation process is needed to build a robust, inclusive, engaging employee culture that is far more resilient and capitalizes on employee intellectual capital. We have also learned that universities, medical schools, and colleges need to develop and teach emergency preparedness and risk management to be ready for catastrophic events.

We are all exhausted, and no end seems to be in sight. In spite of variants, surges, lockdowns, equipment, and supply shortages, we have an enormous opportunity to make significant changes to health and senior care with the right resources. Will it be business as usual? No. We need a robust, flexible culture that encourages employee inclusion with the right tools, ideas, and solutions. Those are the core values and objectives of this book.

We demonstrate successful, proven ways to develop transformation plans to build new cultures, improve operations, increase quality, mitigate risks, successfully handle hiccups, and save revenue. A great deal of global research and interviews were conducted to produce this book. Opinions on different topics and challenges varied, which is a good thing. We can all learn to become stronger and successfully create and manage changes that improve quality and save revenue.

INTRODUCTION

Our parent corporation is Simplified Software Development. We have multiple products and services that include a Comprehensive Dietary Management Software and food management program called "Simplified Nutrition Online (SNO). SNO provides multiple services to successfully reduce food costs and increase the efficacy of food ordering, utilization, supply, and demand, as well as other technology programs, software programs, and a very high experiential level cross-functional solutions entity called the SSD Healthcare Administration Solutions Group. This Group covers all areas of health and senior care operations, emergency preparedness, care quality, risk mitigation, revenue management, transformation, inter-compliance, and other areas especially challenging to health and senior care facilities today. The SSD Healthcare Administration Solutions Group does not only focus on technology or software. All operational areas, policies, procedures, contracts, employee relations and other operations and business areas are reviewed when revenue is bleeding, or for risk mitigation.

The Health and Eldercare Administration Solutions Group provides high-level, deep-rooted consulting, cross-functional experience from the ground up. The core value of the Group includes the fact that employees have great intellectual capital as direct care providers. The Group also captures and utilizes the knowledge of patients and customers. It specializes in cost-savings methodologies, quality standards, benchmarks and inter-compliance. Also included in SSD are technology programs that can result in greater operations efficiencies, leading due diligence feasibility analysis, mediation, organization mergers, acquisitions, sales, and transformations. Other primary operating objectives of SSD are to help our customers successfully resolve business challenges during these times inclusive of the identification of areas of revenue bleeding and the implementation of cost-savings initiatives, emergency management, proactive risk and liability prevention and management, mitigation and reduction.

At our customers’ requests and from speaking at conferences and participating in roundtables, it was requested by numerous customers and potential customers to broaden the scope of SSD and really focus on health and eldercare administration with the development and incorporation of broad-based and customized credible products and programs to save revenue costs. Programs and services like E-Coaching, Training, Multi-topic Business Boot Camps, a Whitepaper Library, relevant Blogs, eventual Podcasts, etc. SSD also facilitates accepted organization culture changes, re-organizations, team-building, strategies for transformation with minimal impact on employees and patients and residents, the development and facilitation of training programs to all levels of employees. A significant advantageous characteristic of SSD is the Company’s experience working with Corporate Headquarters in one or two locations and field facilities in multiple locations. This presents policy and procedural standardization issues, supply and demand tracking, accuracy and rebates, revenue challenges, care and quality inconsistencies, patient EHR and communications issues. Finally SSD has resources and tools that analyze all outsourced services vendors and service contracts to ensure that vendor contracts document customer objectives and work and communicate with customers to accomplish performance expectations, service, quality, business/revenue goals. The importance of Service Partnerships as a valuable SSD tool to accomplish all goals cannot be emphasized enough.

While we received a comprehensive list of queries, the primary questions were about