A MESSAGE FROM ED JIMENEZ
A look ahead: What's in store for 2020
For the New Year, UF Health Shands CEO Ed Jimenez anticipates our priorities for the hospital system over the next 12 months.
What overall message do you want to share with faculty and staff as we begin the year?
It’s important to look back and feel pride for the amazing accomplishments we’ve made, because every person in the organization contributes in some way to enable UF Health to serve our patients and communities and to move medicine forward. We’re now building on these efforts and we need to stay focused on everything that contributes to the best possible experience for our patients.
Meanwhile, we have to keep supporting, valuing and listening to each other. It’s our relationships and teamwork that make UF Health a great place to do this important work and improve lives together.
What priorities are ahead? Let’s start with patient care.
Our priorities don’t change. Our goals stay consistent: We have to deliver the best patient care and service we can, in every opportunity. There are so many examples throughout the organization of how we’re getting this right: We’re No. 1 in the Southeast for lung transplant survival. Many programs have incredible results thanks to our talented faculty and staff.
We’re excited to partner with the College of Medicine to take science to the bedside as fast as possible. We’re looking at new ways to take advantage of the scientific expertise here to benefit our programs, care teams and, of course, our patients.
Why are the national rankings so important?
Being ranked among the top universities and health systems nationally supports all our goals. Our reputation helps us recruit the best faculty and staff, attract the brightest students, pull in research grants and funding, support philanthropic efforts — and shows patients we are their best choice for quality care and outcomes.
Our national best hospital rankings for adult and pediatric services (by U.S. News & World Report) are commendable. We’re rated No. 33 out of all the nation’s academic medical centers based on our quality indicators, according to Vizient, which sets the industry standards for safe, quality care and outcomes.
The thing to be proud about is that we’re always improving and headed in the right direction thanks to everyone’s attention and commitment to excellence. Our goal is to let our work move us up in the national rankings, and let those results motivate and inspire us. We have so many patient success stories ahead to celebrate, and that’s what drives everything.
What’s ahead when it comes to growth and expansion?
We go into 2020 with new affiliations, having just announced plans with The Villages® and the acquisition of the Central Florida Health hospitals. Plus, we will be moved into our property at The Oaks, with outpatient medical practices and then a surgical center. We’ll continue building regional relationships to extend UF Health’s expertise and services in collaboration with other providers. Reaching out to meet community needs throughout the area and state remains a priority.
We’ll also continue upgrades here at the main UF Health Shands Hospital and UF Health Shands Children’s Hospital. As we improve infrastructure, we plan to expand capacity where we can to accommodate the increasing demands for care.
Post-acute care for patients leaving our hospital care also remains important. We’ll also continue to support our rehab hospital teams and the investments in their services with Select Medical. And we’ll continue to evolve our focus on homecare and Select Medical’s long-term acute care hospital within our main medical center.
You’ve mentioned investing in staff: Please talk about this.
Our employee engagement is excellent. We don’t want to take anything for granted as an employer and a family of faculty and staff. I want people, when they think of themselves in 20 or 25 years, to want to still be here working for UF Health. Therefore, engagement is a priority I set for our managers: To use each year’s engagement survey results, take staff feedback and work with their teams to improve the work experience.
Our Nursing and Patient Services division has really excellent practices for engaging, training and supporting staff. We have a 12.2% nurse turnover rate, while the state’s average is 18.5%. In other words, we’re about 41% above the state average, while there’s a lot of competition for highly skilled and talented nurses. That’s fantastic, and I credit our nurse leaders and supervisors, as well as faculty support for nursing.
This is just one great example. However, we can’t rest on our laurels. Engagement is about the ongoing relationship between staff and managers. People want to be heard and have their input valued and used. We need managers willing to listen and use feedback to tackle problems.
Health care should be an inspiring and rewarding place to work. Our results show us that we have an incredibly motivated workforce. This impacts our patients’ experience when our faculty and staff are connected and passionate about what they do. We need to keep work satisfaction a priority.
How else are our executives engaged and leading by example?
We have outstanding leaders who participate. Dr. Nelson (David R. Nelson, M.D., UF senior vice president for health affairs and UF Health president) still runs clinics, sees patients and is an acclaimed physician-researcher.
Dr. Tyndall (J. Adrian Tyndall, M.D., M.P.H., FACEP, UF College of Medicine interim dean and emergency medicine chair) still takes E.R. shifts. Leaders shouldn’t be divorced from the real world.
I’m involved with our hospital operations as I don’t want to be out of touch or useless like a captain asleep at the wheel. We have great hospital executive leaders. I’m eager to work with our new chief operating officer as well as our operations leaders, nursing leaders, medical staff executives and core service chiefs as well as our outstanding directors and managers. We have incredible teams and we’re an engaged leadership team.
Our leaders are emblematic of how hospitals and business/management teams have to shift and evolve along with the organization.
Anything else?
Personally, I want to be responsive to our staff and to the community. Our leadership team is committed to listening and making progress. We all want to make health care better for our patients, for people throughout Gainesville and North Central Florida, and for consumers across the state.
But it’s really simple: People get sick and seek the best place to help them. We do our best to provide the best care for those who need us. This will be another great year because you, our faculty and staff, have that passion and drive to change lives.