Whit Delaney (MHA '22): HCA Houston Kingwood

Hello from Kingwood (Houston), Texas!

I have had the pleasure of spending the last seven weeks at HCA Houston Healthcare Kingwood, a 400+ bed hospital apart of HCA’s Gulf Coast Division in Kingwood, TX, a suburb 30 minutes from downtown Houston. In my time here, I have had the opportunity to work on some really exciting projects and shadow people in various departments. I have learned so much about healthcare in the hospital setting. I am very grateful for CEO John Corbeil (Iowa Alum), COO Joel North, ACOO Brad Gerke, ACOO Adrian Moreno, and the rest of the administrative team at Kingwood for giving me the opportunity to join the team and for being so supportive of my development as an early careerist in the healthcare space. I am also thankful for everyone a part of the MHA program at Iowa (Gwen, Dan, my professors, my GA preceptor Becky O’Rourke, and my classmates) for preparing me for this awesome experience.

Projects:

The majority of the projects I have been working on have been operationally based. Some of the smaller projects I have had the opportunity to help with include:

• Surveying the entire parking lot for needed repairs
• Relocating the security department
• Testing and identifying opportunities with duress buttons hospital-wide
• Coordinating relocation of patients and their belongings following a fire on the unit
• Designing and ordering trophies for departments that scored the highest on the employee engagement survey

Below are the three larger projects I have been working on:

Redesigning the Physician Lounge

The space consists of 2 rooms – the dining room, which holds the food serving station and a small dining area, and the lounge room, which contains a ping pong table, some couches and a TV, and several desktop computers. I have been tasked with redesigning the lounge. Aside from gathering input from physicians, I have coordinated with several departments, including facilities, administration, food and nutrition services (FNS), and provider relations. I have also met with the hospital’s go-to interior designer to aid in the design process and relay some of the requests for the renovations. While the administration is currently financially limited in its ability to invest in these renovations, my goal is to provide all the needed plans so that the investment can be made when the funds are available. In the meantime, I have been working with FNS to adjust the menu, snack options, and food presentation to better match physician preferences.

Internal Signage:

One of HCA’s company-wide mandates is to standardize the signage at all of its facilities. Prior to my arrival, all the external signage had been updated, but the more involved process of standardizing the signage of the interior of the hospital had just begun. My role in this project has been to work with our sign vendor and facilities to identify which room signs we need to change and which signs need to be added or removed. The challenge and large scope of this project lie within the number of rooms within the hospital. Later this week, I will be meeting with the rest of the project team to discuss the feasibility of renumbering nursing units and their rooms, which would entail reconfiguring the EMR, realigning the PBX system, and orienting nurses and other staff to the changes.

Optimizing Throughput:

Due to low staffing, several of the nursing units at the hospital are closed. The lack of beds has caused overcrowding in the ED, and I have been tasked with coming up with ways to decrease the length of stay. This project has only just begun, but I have found that the main areas I will be focusing on are the operations of the discharge lounge, EMR medication reconciliation, morning barrier rounds, and pending discharges. Earlier this week, I visited another HCA hospital in the area with a more efficient DC lounge in order to get an idea of how we could improve ours. I am really excited to move forward with this project because of how open-ended it is and the opportunity it provides to make improvements on a very important metric.

Shadowing:

Much of what I have learned this summer can be attributed to the experiences I have had while shadowing people in various departments. So far, I have had the opportunity to shadow the following departments:

• Food and Nutrition Services (FNS)
• Environmental Services (EVS)
• Facilities Management
• House Supervisor (Administrator On-Site)
• Surgical Services
• Cath Lab
• Rehab
• Respiratory Therapy
• Laboratory
• Radiology

*A Note From The Editor*

If you would like to keep up with Whit, you can find him here on LinkedIn!