CHEF President's Corner

The Chicago Health Executives Forum embraces diversity within the healthcare management field and recognizes that priority as both an ethical and business imperative.  It gives me great pride that just last month I signed, and the Board endorsed, a Collaboration Agreement with the National Forum for Latino Healthcare Executives (NFLHE).  I am optimistic that this agreement will broaden our own leadership base while helping meet the challenges for the nation's future and improve healthcare for our families.  I think the importance of our Collaboration Agreement was underscored by its endorsement by Deborah Bowen, President and CEO of ACHE.  We look forward to working with NFLHE, NAHSE, AHCLA, and other local ACHE Chapters from across the Midwest in the months to come to offer the new and exciting programs you have come to expect.

Eight Ways to Get the Most Out of An Executive Search Firm

A Message from your ACHE Regent

ACHE Members of the 

Metropolitan Chicago area,

Sometimes when a person has a goal, they need a road map of how to achieve it.  That might involve needing a kick start.  One way to begin is to raise your hand.  Become involved.

Let me offer a few suggestions - Participate in the ACHE Leader-to-Leader Program, complete an activity for ACHE or the local chapter - CHEF, or take a colleague to coffee to hear their career story. 

Recruit a member to participate in ACHE or Chapter activities with you - It's always more fun to participate in networking and learning events when you have someone you know at your side (or at least across the room).  When you are listed as the referral name on a new member application, you receive one point for your recruitment.  Remember that when an individual applies for ACHE membership in September, ACHE dues are only $150 for the remainder of 2014 AND ALL of 2015!

Advance a leader - Same as being listed as a referral for a new member, if you serve as a reference on a Fellow application, you will earn one point when the person meets all of their FACHE requirements.

Once you earn a point for referring a new member or on a Fellow application, you will be notified and provided instructions on how to redeem your earned points for professional reward items.  I have several ACHE pens, umbrellas and portfolios from these points over the year that I am proud to use. 

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Understanding the way you lead is critical to success, and knowing that effective leadership for one team or field might not translate to another team or field is equally important. The complexity of the marketplace has prompted the importance of knowing your leadership style and discerning the style that a team will easily respond to. There are a plethora of leadership styles in the workplace, but the following six tend to be the most prominent in today's working environment:

Richard Buchler, MHA, FACHE

2014 President-Elect, CHEF

Trauma Center verification has a "halo effect" that brings up the quality of healthcare for the entire hospital. Find out how being a verified trauma center also leads to excellence in non-emergency care.

"There literally hasn't been a department in our hospital that hasn't been improved by becoming the regional trauma center," says Shawn Miller, Assistant Medical Group Administrator of Kaiser Permanente South Sacramento.  He was part of the team at KPSS that originally decided to push for trauma center verification.  Besides making sense financially, he and his colleagues were convinced that there would be key "intangible" benefits as well.  Now, eight years later, the trauma center designation is creating a "halo effect" in other departments.  "Beyond the inherent improvements in the Emergency Room, trauma center designation has improved patient care in other departments that work with the trauma service line such as surgery, laboratory, imaging, or nursing floors."

One of the departments that Miller oversees at KPSS is the laboratory.  "At first, in order to fulfill the requirements set forth by the American College of Surgeons (ACS) for a trauma center, we needed to develop protocols that allowed for rapid turnarounds of key laboratory tests.  Once these were in place for trauma, the clinical and administrative staff decided to come together to find ways to use these new processes to decrease the turnaround times for all labs."  This process of adapting fast service for trauma patients to all KPSS patients was repeated in other areas such as radiology an

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