Berini highlights actions taken to address employee engagement survey responses

Deborah Berini, president of Hershey Medical Center, shared this email on Wednesday, July 22.

Dear Colleagues:

One of the things I was really looking forward to resuming after we closed the emergency response incident command center was my weekly shadowing. Last week, I was fortunate to shadow Sarah Zerphy, a nurse on 6 Acute Care, and she shared with me a wonderful program called Lion Rounds that was part of the unit’s response to the 2019 employee engagement survey. These rounds improve inter-professional communication and engage the entire team in the care of the patient. In my latest selfie video Sarah was nice enough to talk about the rounds and the impact they are making on staff, faculty and patient satisfaction.

The Lion Rounds are a great example of the many action plans that were created and implemented in response to your thoughtful feedback on the engagement survey. I also heard about the Nuclear Medicine team’s plan to build a better partnership between technologists and physicians by changing a policy that previously required physician review of all images. Dr. Thomas Allen and Chief Nuclear Medicine Tech Jessica Meley developed a list of routine exams that could be checked by a technologist. This single act of working together has helped technologists feel more valued for their level of expertise and improved the patient experience by eliminating longer than needed wait times.

In addition to the unit-based action plans, we worked to address some of the key organizational themes from the survey, which included:  communications and visibility; work pace and pressure; staffing space and resources; front line management and recognition; employee benefit costs and access to care; and optimization of Cerner.

• We created the Employee Concierge Service to provide employees a faster, easier process to get health care appointments.
• We established the Daily Brief, monthly messages and videos from Steve Massini, Dr. Kevin Black and myself, and virtual town halls to update you on real-time issues and changes.
• The senior leadership team devised visibility plans to round or shadow with frontline faculty and staff each week to improve communication and provide better support for them.
• Six new full-time employees were deployed to optimize the faculty experience with Cerner. Though there is still work to be done, this dedicated team is continually fine-tuning improvements based on your feedback.
• A market assessment of MOA and MA wages yielded a $2 per hour raise for individuals in those roles.
• Well Pay, Secure Pay and Care Pay programs protected our employees’ pay during the emergency response and ensured faculty and staff could take appropriate precautions related to quarantining or caring for loved ones.
• We saw a significant 24.4% increase in the use of the PAWS Up program from the start to the end of fiscal year 2020.

During our emergency response, employee morale was top of mind for our leadership team. We deployed a workgroup focused solely on supporting our faculty and staff during this time. This team worked to organize the hero carts and staff retreat zones, and made personal contact with faculty and staff. This team also partnered with the health system to ensure we supported the emotional wellbeing of faculty and staff and helped many of them transition to remote work. I hope that in these activities you saw our ongoing dedication to support everyone during this unprecedented time.

Our commitment to employee engagement will remain a focus for the year ahead. We will be checking in with you via a pulse survey that will begin on August 10. I look forward to reading your comments and hearing how we can continue to make the Milton S. Hershey Medical Center a great place to work.

Deborah Berini
President

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