With change comes the opportunity for greater success
Academic health centers celebrate their new year on July 1. This past July, in addition to welcoming hundreds of new house staff, we embarked on a new vision for patient quality and safety.
This renaissance allows us the opportunity to revisit our goals, realign our priorities and remember the reason we are here: our patients. I am pleased to serve as the interim chief quality officer to provide leadership and support for our quality and safety initiatives while a search is conducted for a permanent chief quality officer who will provide a long-term strategic direction.
During this transition, we will require a laser focus on our responsibility to provide a safe, efficient and effective environment in which our patients can heal. Involving clinicians in process improvement and holding ourselves accountable for our achievements and failures are critical to our success.
The need for teamwork and excellent physician and nurse communication within and across units has never been greater. Our patients see us as one health care center regardless of location and we must function as such.
As we grow, teamwork and collaboration can be a challenge if our relationships are not strong. With engagement from the UF College of Medicine physician leadership and UF Health leaders, we have a path forward to face our challenges and become a top performer in quality and safety.
Our focus this year is on hospital-acquired infections, emergency department throughput, patient-centeredness and improving how we communicate with each other. More importantly, we are working toward improving how we communicate with our patients. As we look ahead toward the opening of the UF Health Heart & Vascular and Neuromedicine hospitals, we anticipate standing on a strong foundation of quality and safety, rooted in a philosophy that puts the needs of our patients above all else.