When Listening Turns to Action

Here is the latest in the series, “Objectives in Action.” Each month, we’ll feature a team from across the organization that’s working to make one of our 4 Top Company Objectives a reality. Next up, our Home Care team.

Top Company Objective: Make our field-based roles the obvious choice for top talent.

Team: VNS Health Home Care

The situation: Newly hired home care clinicians were feeling overwhelmed and unsupported when they started working at VNS Health and, as a result, many were leaving the organization after just a few months.

As if that’s not challenging enough: Additionally, due to the nationwide clinician shortage, longtime VNS Health clinicians have had to take on more caseloads and were experiencing burnout.   

The Home Care team has been using insights from the roundtables to make meaningful changes. These changes include:

• Establishing a dedicated preceptor role—team members whose only job is to guide, support and mentor new clinical hires.
• Expanding the size of the Nurse Residency program for recent nursing school graduates and nurses from other settings like hospitals who are new to home care.
• Simplifying the workflow of our Clinical Field Managers and empowering them so they can focus more on their field clinicians and be more involved in the onboarding process.
• Working to fix and enhance the features on the SWIFT Wound Care app.
• Looking at ways to simplify the documentation and scheduling process.
• Rolling out “Rapid Daily Check-Ins,” where schedulers and managers work closely with field clinicians to make sure any changes in daily caseload are updated and communicated more promptly. This allows clinicians the opportunity to give direct feedback on that day’s assignments and their schedule for the upcoming day.
• Creating Clinical Advisory Boards, one for each discipline, made up of field team members, to help develop strategies for rolling out the different improvements that impact their practice.
• Supporting Clinical Field Managers through a new educational format called the “CFM Academy” that addresses issues specific to the CFM role.

The results: Nurse retention is up for January and February. While it’s too soon to say if this trend will continue, the organization is heading in the right direction.

Why it matters: The more clinicians VNS Health is able to hire and retain, the better the work experience will be for both new and longtime clinicians. Growing our clinical teams also means the organization can accept more referrals without increasing the workload of current field clinicians.

Driving toward our 3-year goal: Improving the work experience for field clinicians contributes to our goal of achieving 95% team member retention, because clinicians will want to have a career with VNS Health. The changes the Home Care team has made will also help us achieve a 5-Star Quality and Consumer Experience, which in turn will contribute to another 3-year goal: To have 100,000 patients, members and clients in our care on any given day.

What Home Care team members are saying: “I made the transition from a hospital to home care,” says Elena Kyriakides, a field nurse who recently observed her one-year anniversary with VNS Health. “After joining the Home Care team, I had a month-long orientation that included onboarding activities made up of office work to learn our systems, labs to sharpen my skills, and field time with a nurse preceptor who showed me the ins and outs of home care. Right off the bat, I felt supported and prepared to succeed in my new position.”

And here’s what a Home Care team member said in the latest Employee Engagement Survey: “I like that VNS Health is open to listening and responding to their employees’ feedback.  It makes everyone feel that they belong in this organization and their voices are being heard.”