You Make Good Things Happen
INSIDE HEALTH PLANS with John Burke
Welcome to my Frontline column, Inside Health Plans. I hope everyone is enjoying the lovely autumn weather we’ve been having.
Good things are happening these days within Health Plans! As Dan Savitt celebrated in his CEO Zoom the other week, our VNS Health MAP Total plan earned a 5-Star quality rating for the year from the New York State Department of Health, the highest rating possible—making us the only 5-Star MAP plan in New York State.
Additionally, our MAP Total plan just received the #1 ranking for Quality out of 44 MAP and MLTC programs.
Also, our MLTC plan earned an outstanding 4-Star quality rating, which is very difficult to achieve. These great successes follow on top of our Health Plans being named to Crain’s 2024 Best Places to Work in New York City.
So how is it that we’re able to accomplish these things? Quite honestly, it’s because of you, our team members.
Your collaboration and commitment to the people we serve creates positive change in our business. I don’t just mean our Health Plans team members—I mean all of us at VNS Health make good things happen, because we all have the same Mission, we all are aligned on our Top Company Objectives, and we all care passionately about helping our patients, plan members and clients live their best lives in their home and communities.
That’s why, too, it’s so important that you feel empowered and engaged working at VNS Health. Empowered and engaged team members enthusiastically strive to achieve these goals.
Which is also why we’ve developed Action Plans. Our Action Plans are one of the ways we’re addressing feedback that VNS Health team members shared in our last Employee Engagement Survey.
These Action Plans can be described as “You Asked, We Did, What’s Next.” Here are two Action Plans that are now happening within Health Plans as a direct result of survey input from team members.
In our last employee engagement survey, Health Plans team members asked for more input into decision-making… better cooperation across different departments within our Health Plans… and more opportunities for professional development.
What we did:
We created an Ambassador Program. In this program, team members representing every part of our Health Plans team—our Ambassadors—come together each month to discuss challenges and concerns, share feedback from colleagues within their own departments, and work with each other and our Health Plans leadership to make decisions that will benefit all areas of the team. We’ve already had one such gathering, and we’re looking to grow the attendance at these get-togethers going forward.
We also launched a Health Plans Lunch & Learn Series to help provide opportunities for professional development. This series consisted of five group lunches, held weekly in September and October. At these lunches, professional development experts took participants through different best practices related to personal and professional growth—such as creating a roadmap with specific goals… maintaining the “stretch” between your current and desired state… and learning from mentors and role models to accelerate your growth.
These are just two of the many Action Plans that are happening in Health Plans and across our organization.
This week, you’ll be receiving in your inbox our 2024 Employee Engagement Survey. It’s coming from a third-party independent research firm named Perceptyx. When you receive the survey, which is anonymous, please take a few minutes to complete it. Whether you’re in Health Plans or another part of our organization, you have a voice here at VNS Health. I very much want to hear from you and encourage everyone to complete the survey. Also, please feel free to share any ideas and issues directly with me.
Together, we can help make good things happen.
Thank you. Until next time.
