by
Sean Ruck, Contributing Editor | September 02, 2019
From the September 2019 issue of HealthCare Business News magazine
HCB News: How long have you been with Mount Sinai St. Luke’s?
AG: I’ve been with the Mount Sinai Health System since February 2014.
HCB News: What attracts staff to Mount Sinai St. Luke’s?
AG: Similar to my prior hospital, Mount Sinai St. Luke’s needed a turnaround strategy. That was very clear to the leadership at Mount Sinai and that was my charge here at St. Luke’s. There’s been well over $100 million of capital investment to build an ambulatory platform, to upgrade equipment, to replace the EMR, to transform the appearance and operation of the organization. There have also been investments in the hiring of staff to cover gaps in our hospital service, and we’ve hired staff to keep up with the volume growth that’s occurred. We’ve targeted certain services to expand and grow — cardiology, cardiac surgery, bariatric surgery, orthopedic trauma, cancer and our geriatric program.
Staff are attracted to the opportunity to work for the Mount Sinai Health System. They are also attracted to working for a hospital whose services are growing and increasing in complexity. Mount Sinai St. Luke’s is a Lean hospital. When I first came to Mount Sinai, I advised Dr. Ken Davis, the president of the Mount Sinai Health System, that my experience of running a hospital was through a Lean framework and that’s what I wanted to do here at St. Luke’s. He was absolutely encouraging. From day one, that’s what we’ve done here. We’ve used Lean to develop our daily management system, for process improvement and to galvanize and energize the culture.
John D. Puskas, M.D., chair of Cardiovascular Surgery at Mount Sinai St. Luke's and Mount Sinai West, and Gianluca Torregrossa, M.D., perform the Mount Sinai Health System's first TECAB surgery.
It’s evident to anyone who comes here, that the experience of working at St. Luke’s is different than at other hospitals. Here, the wisdom of the frontline staff is valued and cultivated. We want our frontline workers to be emissaries of problem solving. I think people who are attracted to that and that level of agency with respect to their work, really want to come here. We also try to emphasize the tenets of a just culture. Errors, when they do occur, are typically associated with system and process failures. What we’re not trying to do is create a culture of blame, we’re creating a culture where we can examine our failures and do so honestly and transparently in a way that’s not pointing fingers at our employees, but instead identifying processes that can be fixed and improved.
