2019 President’s Award Finalists: Innovation
June 2019
Each year, Northwell’s President’s Awards recognize team members who not only surpass our expectations and standards of excellence, but also those who drive innovative business outcomes.
The Innovation award recognizes team members who were finalists in the Innovation Challenge. Northwell’s Innovation Challenge empowers team members to come up with the next big health care innovation in areas such as revenue through new or existing channels, improve patient experience, improve quality of care, positively impact health outcomes and so much more. As an organization, we understand that our people are the ones who bring our patient care to the next level, and this program gives them an opportunity to share their big ideas. Meet this year’s finalists.
AccuLABeler
AccuLABeler represents a proprietary middle-ware solution that interfaces with existing robotics machinery and a lab information system (LIS) to more efficiently relabel tubes referred to the lab for analysis from non-system sources. At Northwell, the current workflow requires 12 FTEs who perform accessioning and relabeling of these tubes. The total available market encompasses reference laboratories in the United States and abroad.
Bedside Voice Assistant
The Bedside Voice Assistant (BVA) involves the continued development of an existing prototype of a bed-side Alexa based voice assistant created by members of the Northwell Innovation Center. This innovation represents a developed software product which is cloud based, HIPAA compliant and will be agnostic to EMR system for integration and scalability.
EDCAP aza-Peptide Building Blocks for Preferred Drug Characteristics
Many pharmaceutical drugs are peptides, small fragments of proteins. When carefully chosen, peptides offer the advantage of selectivity toward a target coupled with minimal adverse side effects. However, peptides suffer from a very short half-life, and their effect can be very short lived because they are destroyed in seconds in the blood. The EDCAP technology offers a general solution to this stability issue through changing the labile peptide bond to an alternate bond that is resistant to peptidases (stable for hours in the blood).
LabFly: Mobile Phlebotomy App
The proposed innovation reflects the development of a mobile blood drawing solution for patients and caregivers. As developed, LabFly would serve as the patient facing application, and integrate with LabFly Phleb, a phlebotomist facing application. The applications have been reviewed by the Northwell OCIO, OCIO security review, penetration tests and a QM validation. Future development of the application could support on demand appointments for flu shots and strep testing, and/or integration with care delivery within emergency rooms.
Real-Time Actionable Data (RAD)
The RAD invention represents a data analysis and reporting tool which provides real time, actionable data related to ED utilization and the allocation of clinical resources. RAD addresses an unmet need in many if not all emergency rooms by supporting data driven, patient specific, decision making. This product builds upon the work conducted over the past several years within the Northwell Emergency Medicine service line.
An Appointment With: Edward Fraser, VP, Community Relations
June 2019
Since joining the health system in 2006, Edward’s career has evolved from his role at Southside Hospital within the Human Resources department to Nursing Education, and then to the department of Community Relations. He has grown from director of community relations at Southside Hospital to, vice president of Community Relations for the entire organization.
In addition to his role as VP, Edward is Co-Chair of Northwell’s EXPRESSIONS Business Employee Resource Group (BERG). Beyond Northwell, he’s also an active member of many community organizations and is currently enrolled in the Energeia Partnership Program at Molloy College. Throughout every step of his career, Edward has been known for his deep and abiding commitment to his family and to the many communities he serves.
We sat down with Edward to talk about the work of Community Relations and Northwell’s EXPRESSIONS BERG.
Tell us about the work of Northwell’s Community Relations team.
The Community Relations team handles community outreach, corporate sponsorships and promotes employee engagement initiatives for the health system. I’ve worked to build a dedicated team that connects with the communities surrounding our hospitals to bring education and build partnerships with local businesses, faith-based organizations, school districts and charitable organizations. We also manage two immediate care centers on Fire Island, acting as their premier health care provider.
Another big initiative we oversee along with finance is Community Benefit. Community benefits are programs or activities that provide treatment and/or promote health and healing as a response to identified community needs. They increase access to health care and improve community health. Community Benefit tracking is required for all not-for-profit hospitals seeking to maintain their tax-exempt status, as part of the Affordable Care Act.
Tell us more about the impact your team is making on the communities we serve.
With team members being active members of many community organizations including many Chambers of Commerce, Splashes of Hope, as well as Islip Food for Hope. Inc., we’re able to keep an eye on how trends are impacting our community.
How has the EXPRESSIONS Business Employee Resource Group (BERG) evolved?
Northwell’s EXPRESSIONS BERG is an LGBTQ Employee Diversity group. EXPRESSIONS has grown to be comprised of more than 400 Northwell team members who identify as members, or are allies of the LGBTQIA+ community. EXPRESSIONS was created to ensure our employees have a voice and the opportunity to be heard. It’s initiatives like this that led to Northwell being named among the 50 employers recognized for fostering an inclusive workplace for members of the LGBTQIA+ community and ranking second nationally and No. 1 in New York State as a top health systems for diversity on DiversityInc’s top Hospitals & Health Systems for Diversity list.
Additionally, we oversee is the annual system-wide survey with the Human Rights Campaign (HRC) for the Healthcare Equality Index (HEI) which is the national benchmarking tool evaluating healthcare practices and policies as related to the equity and inclusion of our LGBTQ patients, visitors and employees. Northwell just scored 100% on all 25 surveys that were submitted for this year.
What activities does Northwell Health have planned to celebrate Pride Month?
The EXPRESSIONS BERG is participating in many exciting festivals and marches throughout the month of June to celebrate Pride month. As part of Northwell’s commitment to the LGBTQIA+ community, the health system has partnered with NYC Pride to serve as a principal sponsor of events tied to WorldPride 2019 and celebrate the 50th anniversary of the Stonewall uprising. Northwell’s platinum sponsorship with the nonprofit Heritage of Pride, Inc., the organization that produces New York City’s official LGBTQIA+ Pride events, the March, PrideFest and Family Movie Night. We’ll also have a presence at Westchester Loft Pride, Rockland County Pride, Queens Pride, Long Island Pride and Cherry Grove Pride. If you are in the area, join us!
2019 President’s Award Finalists: Teamwork
June 2019
Each year, Northwell’s President’s Awards recognize team members who not only surpass our expectations and standards of excellence, but also those who drive innovative business outcomes.
The Teamwork award recognizes a team who is flexible, hardworking and made for unwavering support. They successfully collaborate to improve quality, financial performance and/or patient-centric care by leveraging and embracing diversity while creating a feeling of belonging. Meet this year’s finalists.
Deliver the Vote
Lenox Hill Hospital
A pair of nurses with a strong commitment to upholding the right to vote, and an amazing determination not to take no for an answer enabled dozens of hospitalized patients to participate in the American electoral system.
Their efforts began two years ago when a patient inquired about voting but at that point, they were unable to help. Ahead of the 2018 election, Lisa Schavrien and Erin Smith decided to be pro-active, exploring ways to help their patients be heard at the ballot box. Their inquiries led them to a series of rejections by boards of elections, non-responses from political offices and a trip to a courtroom in Queens.
With the help from other volunteers, they canvassed their hospital for patients who wanted to vote. In one room, a patient facing brain surgery managed to cast her vote before surgery; in another, a patient’s partner was unable to get a ballot for the patient because they weren’t married, but Lisa obtained a ballot for him.
Voting may not seem like an issue clinical team members need to tackle, and they could find no other hospital making the same effort, but thanks to this team that went above and beyond, 75 Northwell patients were able to cast their ballots.
ECMO-TO-GO
Long Island Jewish Medical Center, North Shore University Hospital, Southside Hospital
Made up of a team of well-honed specialists, ECMO-TO-GO takes its life-saving skills wherever they are needed, elevating the level of care available to seriously ill patients. The team develops its successes with the cardiopulmonary bypass technique through continuity of communication and care delivered by all team members, commitment to continuous improvement and the depth of care provided by experts from across Northwell. The innovative approach of the team traveling to the patient rather than the other way around means a highly qualified, seasoned team is available to the sickest of patients. With a mortality rate of about 50 percent in these kinds of patients, the concept of such a team grew out of the establishment of an acute lung injury program at Long Island Jewish Medical Center and the launch of a heart transplant program. Northwell physicians recognized the need to provide stable, quality care as quickly as possible, leading to the ECMOTO- GO program.
The strength of the group comes from their ability to harness their differences in expertise to meet the dire needs of a complicated patient population. They do so with seamless coordination, deep compassion, and deliberate communication ultimately forging something stronger than any individual person.
Food as Health Implementation Team
Long Island Jewish Valley Stream
Team members have put reliable access to food at the center of a pioneering effort to improve the health of their patients. After people in multiple departments recognized that some patients had trouble finding affordable, nutritious food when they returned home, a team came together to brainstorm some solutions. Their conclusions: provide discharged patients with the resources to find affordable foods and to prepare meals that would help restore them to health.
The Food as Health (FAH) Program screens patients from the outpatient wound care center, and one inpatient unit for food insecurity. Patients in need with nutrition-related conditions (e.g. diabetes, hypertension, unintentional weight loss) are referred to the appropriate FAH service arm for support. Patients who are mobile and able to cook for themselves are referred to the FAH hospital-based onsite resource center. The patient is provided two days’ worth of nutritious emergency food, nutrition education and counseling, and referrals to community resources.
The collaborative effort of the multidisciplinary workgroup to identify clinical partners, establish workflows, reports and outcomes is a significant reason for the successful implementation of the FAH program. The team continues to work together to identify the outcome measures and establish reporting to demonstrate improvement in patient outcomes and hospital data such as decreased readmissions.
Inpatient Charge Capture (IPCC)
Corporate, Revenue Cycle Operations, Medical Group
When a small group of data-savvy professionals began examining the question of whether Northwell was billing and collecting for every professional service provided in hospitals, it quickly became clear that they needed more expertise.
The question of revenue capture is a long-standing one and quantifying it and executing a process across the health system was huge challenge. The team grew to involve several Information Services disciplines and data experts and as it grew, so did the project. Instead of finding a basic report on where to find the revenue opportunities, the team produced much more. They came up with a real-time, web-based tool that allows service lines and/ or individuals to know what the missing billing opportunities are daily/weekly/monthly. It allows the user to filter by service line, hospital, provider and unit. The tool is easy to navigate and provides a weekly “subscription” service for providers.
The deep dive in the collaborative effort also identified a $10 million revenue opportunity for Northwell, the result of experts collaborating and using their own areas of expertise to produce a positive outcome.
Northwell Transfusion Medicine
Northwell Health Labs
A team of professionals collaborated to take on the challenge of ensuring Northwell hospitals maintained fresh and adequate supply of platelets to cope with both routine and emergency use. Maintaining a blood product supply is essential to optimal patient care, but daily usage can be difficult to forecast. Platelets, expensive to produce, test and store, have a short shelf life and frequently expire before they can be used.
This team’s bold solution to meeting the need and reducing costly waste was to develop a delivery system that moves blood products throughout the health system, with many ultimately winding up at the hospitals that routinely need them the most. Breaking away from the existing system, the team began with data, figuring out a system to outline a new distribution process. That birthed a “Round Robin” transportation system to reduce supplemental and emergency deliveries. The concept of rotating platelets from the community hospitals to the final destination of one of two tertiary hospitals is based on usage. Long Island Jewish Medical Center and North Shore University Hospital combined utilize as many as 50 units a day for Cardiac, Trauma, Surgical, Oncology and Transplant services. Through extensive monitoring and trending of patient platelet needs, a dramatic savings of more than $200,000 was realized in 2018 in expiration waste.
School-Based Vocational Services
South Oaks Hospital
A committed group of professionals provides students challenged by intellectual and developmental disabilities with services that are tailored to individuals from 27 school districts across Long Island. Students receive coachin g, job readiness training and social skills development in both a classroom and professional setting with more than 100 participating companies with the goal of promoting independence and developing skills to prepare these young adults to enter the workforce after graduation.
The collaboration of these team members led to 64% of the graduating students finding employment post-graduation. On a daily basis, this team manages to touch the lives of more than 200 youths and parents, on Long Island. Nearly all of the team members work remotely and are required to travel throughout their day to meet the needs of the various sites they are working to serve.
The team has been able to create new approaches to learning in school settings by implementing in-school businesses where students can improve work readiness skills. Through personal dedication and putting creativity to work, they are making big differences in the lives of these students.
The Fin
Feinstein Institute for Medical Research
Experts with a diverse set of skills devised and conducted the first pilot clinical trial of the Fin, a novel 3D-printed swim prosthesis designed for use in a recreational pool setting. The dedicated group was seeking ways to improve recreational opportunities for people with lower-limb amputations, who, according to studies, are less likely to participate in physical activity than the general population.
Often working on their own time, they established protocols to ensure a thorough test that respected each individual’s dignity and needs while examining all aspects of the prosthesis. The most common design for a swim prosthesis has a fixed angle foot (“ankle foot”) that is at 90 degrees with the floor, which, while it is easy to use in the water, is not useful when walking over ground or transitioning into and out of the water. The 3-D printing also significantly lowers the typical cost of the prosthesis.
All participants in the test found the prosthesis easy to put on and take off. The majority (71%) of participants reported being extremely satisfied with the prosthesis.
Every member of the multidisciplinary team brought to the project their passion for wanting to improve the quality of life, participation and inclusion for individuals with lower limb amputations.
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7 ways to heat up your career this summer
June 2019
Summer is here and with the changes of the season comes sunshine, beaches, vacation and…career development? Though it may be tempting to slip into vacation mode full-time, summer offers a lot of opportunities to enhance your career without giving up your fun in the sun.
Develop new skills
Offering to cover projects for your coworkers while they’re on vacation allows you to develop new skills and gain first-hand experience that you may not typically get in your role. Work with your manager and teammate to prepare for their absence. You will show your team spirit and ambition along the way!
Summer reading
Summer reading shouldn’t end after high school graduation. Whether you’re hitting the beach or sitting poolside, don’t miss the perfect opportunity to refine your skills. Relaxing with a good professional development book can help you learn how to boost your leadership skills, improve how you communicate, and provide self-reflection.
Make use of the extra sunshine
The sun is rising earlier, and you could too! Develop a morning routine that helps you take advantage of the summer season. Start your morning off right with meditation, exercise, create a to-do list, eat a healthy breakfast, or simply enjoy a cup of coffee outside.
Revamp your online presence
Grab some shade and take some time to update your LinkedIn profile with your latest work information and skills, plus connect with coworkers and friends to grow your network.
Hold meetings outdoors
Head outdoors for lunch or hold your team meetings at the park. Have lunch with your mentor on a regular basis to grow and develop your skills while checking in for feedback and advice. And instead of the usual indoor staff meetings, take a field trip to the park for some team building activities. With everyone eager to get some sun, planning some outside activities is the perfect way to regroup this summer.
Volunteer
Invest in yourself while making an impact on others. This summer find an opportunity to give back to the community by volunteering or if you are a Northwell employee, get active in one of our Business Employee Resource Groups (BERGs). Meet new people and help your community.
Enjoy your vacation
While it’s important to develop professionally, it’s also important to take time off! Enjoy your summer vacation and schedule some time away from work and the internet. And even better, studies have shown that summer vacations help boost your productivity once you’ve returned and you’re able to reinvigorate your career with a fresh mindset.
Are you ready to take your career to the next level? Apply to Northwell Health today!
Northwell Health Recipe: Spring Duck Salad
June 2019
Barbecue season is here and our Northwell Health chefs have prepared the perfect dish to wow guests at your next event! Learn how to prepare a Spring Duck Salad that’s as healthy as it is delicious.
Spring Duck Salad:
Preparation Time:15 mins
Cooking Time: 30 mins
Total Yield: 6 salads
Equipment: Blender or robo coupe, saute pan, tongs, spoon, bowl, cutting board knife
Method:
- Preheat the oven to 325 degrees.
- Pat duck breast dry and using a sharp knife, score the skin with a cross- hatch pattern.
The first step is to score the fat to help it render more efficiently. Make very shallow cuts in a tight crisscross pattern across the surface of the duck. With a sharp knife, this requires virtually no pressure: just slide the blade along, while barely breaking through the skin. If you prefer to render out more of the fat, simply make deeper cuts. Do not be tempted to remove it prior to cooking. That layer of fat protects the meat, allowing you to cook it gently and evenly; because duck is best served medium-rare. - Start the glaze: toast the chile pieces in a skillet, pressing them down firmly with a spatula for a few seconds until they release a toasty aroma, then flip them, and press down the other side. Place the chiles into a small bowl, cover with hot water and let rehydrate for 30 minutes. Drain, reserving 1/3 cup of the soaking water.
- In a blender or robo coupe: combine the ancho chiles, the reserved soaking liquid, garlic, oregano, pepper, cumin, honey, pinot noir and 1 teaspoon salt. Blend to a smooth puree, scraping down and stirring frequently. Press through a medium-mesh strainer into a small bowl. Set aside 1/2 cup of the glaze for the dressing.
- Place 2 of the duck breasts seasoned with salt skin side down in a pan on medium-low* heat. Sear for 6 minutes until richly brown and the skin is crispy, flip and sear the underside for 1 1/2 minutes. Transfer to a wire rack set over a rimmed baking sheet and repeat this procedure with the remaining breasts.
- Take the remaining ancho glaze and brush the top of each of the duck breasts. Place the baking sheet into the center of the preheated oven at 325 degrees and roast for 20 to 25 minutes or until the internal temperature reaches 125 degrees. Remove from the oven and allow to cool for 5 minutes before slicing.
- Sautee the corn with a bit of the leftover rendered duck fat.
- To make the dressing: blend together the dressing ingredients: ancho glaze reserved, extra virgin olive oil, lime juice, honey, and salt
- Once the duck breasts have been sliced, plate up individual servings by arranging the rocket greens on the plate. Fan out the duck breast slices and sprinkle the radish slices, mango, and avocado over the top of the salad. Place the julienned scallions on each of the salads and sautéed corn on top- drizzle on the dressing.
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*When duck breast is seared at a higher temperature, the flesh quickly cooks before enough fat has rendered out, leaving you with a thick, flabby layer of fat over tough meat. When you use gentle heat, the fat has time to render off, while heat slowly transfers to the flesh through the buffer of the thick skin layer. This gives you tender flesh with a minimal gradient, as well as delicious, crisp skin.
Ingredients: | Quantity |
---|---|
6 Duck Breast boneless (skin on) | 140 grams |
Salt | scant |
Garlic Cloves (roasted) | 6 cloves |
Dried Ancho Chiles | 56 grams |
Oregano | 5 grams |
Black Pepper | 1 gram |
Cumin | .5 grams |
Honey | 60ml |
Pinot noir | 30ml |
Ancho glaze: made from above | 120ml |
Extra Virgin Olive oil | 180ml |
Lime juice | 80ml |
Honey | 30ml |
Salt | 5 grams |
French breakfast Radish | 6 ea. |
Rocket Arugula | 336 grams |
Avocados (diced) | 2 ea. |
Sweet Corn (shucked and kernels removed) | 2 ea. |
Mango champagne (peeled and diced) | 2 ea. |
Purple Scallions (trimmed and julienned) | 6 ea. |