Presbyterian Healthcare Services

Need:

Like all health care organizations, Presbyterian Healthcare Services must simultaneously strive for both clinical excellence and bottom-line viability. But unlike many organizations, Presbyterian has chosen to address these imperatives through an ambitious strategy. “Our overall strategy is national excellence and we have three core goals, around external measures of excellence, that are part of that overall strategy,” says John Zondlo, Presbyterian’s executive director of organizational learning. Those three goals are attaining a AA financial rating, moving into the top 10 percent of all hospitals in patient safety, and winning the prestigious Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award. With the exception of the AA financial rating, which it attained in 2006, the other two strategic goals demanded that Presbyterian focus on its people.

Solution:

Striving to execute on its “national excellence” strategy, Presbyterian partnered with DDI to implement multiple initiatives covering the areas of leadership development, selection, and patient satisfaction. In establishing a leadership development curriculum, Presbyterian identified its best leaders, based on employee satisfaction scores, and then used these exemplary leaders as the benchmark for the remaining leader population. Zondlo and his team conducted interviews and focus groups to determine the specific behaviors that set the best leaders apart from the pack and then they built their leadership development initiative accordingly. These benchmarks proved especially important in guiding the development of new leaders.

Results:

Through its leadership development, selection, and patient satisfaction initiatives, Presbyterian Healthcare Services has realized the following results:

  • Two-percentage-point reduction in turnover. Presbyterian estimates that each point improvement in turnover is worth $1 million to $5 million in cost savings.
  • Ninety-day turnover rate reduced from 7 percent to 4.5 percent.
  • Of 180 leaders who went through the leadership development courses, nearly all gave the training the highest-possible rating.
  • Improvement in patient satisfaction scores for physicians who have completed Service Plus® for Physicians.