For the past several months, I have been searching for a new blog title. Nick’s Blog, NickJacobs.org, Ask a Hospital President, Taking the Hell out of Healthcare… none of them really told the story of my passion, my drive, my desire to change healthcare in a way that would be meaningful for every patient, every employee, and every physician. Finally, the idea of what exactly I believe in, try to strive for, and teach hit me: “Healing Hospitals.” Not only do I believe that we can make our hospitals healing places, I also believe that we can heal the hospitals themselves.
Nick Jacobs, FACHE – HealingHospitals.com
For too many years, the Socratic style of teaching our docs has basically made many of them as tough as professional football players. We have experienced “The Old Guard” in nursing, where, when new nurses come on board the older nurses are encouraged to “eat their young.” We also know that the over-utilization of overhead paging, blood tests in the middle of the night, loud staff members, et al lead to what can only be described as a tense environment.
For the past 20 plus years, we have advocated a kinder, gentler hospital environment. During that time we have introduced all types of non-traditional healing environments, integrative medicine, roving psychologists, drum circles, aroma, music, pet, and humor therapy as well as the elimination of bullies from the medical staff.
These are just a few of the very effective mechanism that can be introduced to create healing environments in hospitals. Healing gardens, labyrinyths, 24 hour visiting, double beds in the OB suites, and the beat goes on and on with decorative fountains, fireplaces, skylights, balconies, but most importantly dignity and respect amongst all staff and visitors toward patients. So, “Healing Hospital” has multiple meanings. Healing will take place more quickly, thoroughly, and meaningfully in these facilities, and the entire staff will be charged with the promotion of healing by creating an overall healing environment.
Well, I’m sure if you type in nickjacobs.org or even Ask a Hospital President.com you’ll still get to us, but remember that our overall goal, our direction, our mission, our passion, and our job is to help you to create healing environments where infection rates drop, as will lengths of stay, readmision, restraint and mortality rates. Call us at SunStone Consulting, LLC. 412-992-6197.
Those who have worked with me know that I have been unequivocally one of the most loyal supporters of the PlanetreePhilosophy of care in the world.
My former place of employment was the third Planetree hospital in the country, after Planetree’s headquarters moved to Griffin (Derby, CT.) We were the first Planetree hospital in Pennsylvania, and that hospital, Windber Medical Center, is now one of the top ten Planetree-designated sites internationally. After having served on the Board of Directors of Planetree for nearly eight years, having written literally dozens of blog posts and articles about Planetree, having taught numerous online seminars for them, contributed a chapter to their latest book, and served on the Planetree Speaker’s Bureau for half a dozen years, I’m back once again with a presentation this Tuesday at the Planetree 2009 conference. It’s called: Take Care of Your Employees and They Will Take Care of Your Patients.
Although I was encouraged to retire from the board in order to give newer members their opportunity to participate, and am no longer a part of the Speaker’s Bureau, with no formal ties to the organization anymore, I want to assure you that my experience, passion, and commitment to humanizing healthcare, transparency, creating a nurturing environment for patients and their families could not be stronger.
Since my transition from formally running hospitals full time, I have immersed myself deeply into the world of helping hospitals through my consulting practice to achieve the patient, employee, and family satisfaction ratings that ensure top scores in HCHAPS which, in turn, will result in increased business, increased revenue, and increased growth for any organization.
Nick Jacobs, FACHE
I am including one of my lastest articles on Integrative Health written for Hospital News. Remember, if I can help, just call, e-mail or or comment:
Integrative Medicine
Massage, Flower Essences, Spiritual Healing, Drumming, Reiki, Acupuncture, Music, Aroma, Humor, Pet, and Art Therapy; all of these healing practices were formerly referred to as Alternative or Complementary Medicine. They deserve, however, to be referred to as Integrative Medicine. Because, when we integrate these various disciplines with other contemporary healing methodologies, the results can be amazing.
As a hospital CEO, it brought me great satisfaction to introduce all of these treatments to the healing environment of the hospital. Many times they came amid intense resistance from both the medical staff, and some members of leadership. In fact, after nearly 10 years of offering comprehensive exposure to Integrative Medicine, we still had a smattering of nonbelievers. The only thing questionable about these therapies for a healthcare administrator is that the typical insurance companies don’t cover the costs of all of them and cash payments come into play.
The number of patients coming to our facility had tripled through the emergency room alone as did the overall budget of the entire organization during that time period. Those “Forest for the Trees” practical leaders still could not bring themselves to give credit to one of the major contributing factors involved in that surge of the hospital’s popularity. Yes, of course, we also encouraged 24 hour, seven day a week visiting, had guest beds in many patient’s rooms, and served meals to the families on the medical floor where their loved one was a patient. Did all of this combine to the create a healing environment? Of course it did, but Integrative Medicine was the heart and soul of the difference.
Their skepticism seems to fit into the cycle of questioning the validity of wellness and prevention, two comprehensively established methodologies for improving general health and well-being, proven over centuries of unofficial clinical trials. Wellness and Prevention works, but because the insurance companies have not yet fully embraced these philosophies, then some still say that they are not valid. Treating sickness can be as comprehensive as ensuring wellness. For whatever reason, some of our medical and administrative leaders often confuse reimbursements with healing, and forget to add new patients and additional income from related disciplines like PT and OT to the equation.
As a nonmedical, nonscientist, it was easy for me to understand why the various integrative arts worked so well for our patients and their families. From the old song, “All You Need is Love,” you could easily enjoy the looks on the faces of those patients and family members who used these treatments to receive sorely needed relief from whatever pain or loneliness they were experiencing. It doesn’t matter if you’re eighty minutes or eighty years old; touch, nurturing, and love all remain critical in our lives. Have you seen the statistics on how much better people do with pets than without, or how many babies died in orphanages due to the “failure to thrive?”
None of these ancient arts were created because the scientific method produced FDA approved results in trials of 200,000 or more. They evolved into centuries old healing arts because they provided relief and help in a time when leeches, bleedings, and a lack of hand washing were the accepted medical treatments. The tribal shaman, medicine man, healers, and other spiritual leaders all knew what the subtle and not so subtle impact of their work meant to their fellow human beings.
We have casually observed the use of these healing modalities on patients who have experienced restored feelings to otherwise numb feet.
We have seen them relieved from debilitating back pain, healed from hopeless wounds, saved from surgeries due to the opening of blocked intestines through acupuncture. We have observed psychological breakthroughs from drumming that had never been reached by traditional therapy. Truthfully, I didn’t care exactly what made our patients better, just that they were better, and the results were dramatic, with an infection rate of 1% or less, a 3.4 day length of stay, a low readmission rate, and the lowest mortality rate for adjusted morbidity in the region.
The time has come to realize that the old habits, the old arguments, are irrelevant to the challenges faced by our people. They lead nations to act in opposition to the very goals that they claim to pursue — and to vote, often in this body, against the interests of their own people. They build up walls between us and the future that our people seek, and the time has come for those walls to come down. Together, we must build new coalitions that bridge old divides — coalitions of different faiths and creeds; of north and south, east, west, black, white, and brown.
The choice is ours. We can be remembered as a generation that chose to drag the arguments of the 20th century into the 21st; that put off hard choices, refused to look ahead, failed to keep pace because we defined ourselves by what we were against instead of what we were for. Or we can be a generation that chooses to see the shoreline beyond the rough waters ahead; that comes together to serve the common interests of human beings, and finally gives meaning to the promise embedded in the name given to this institution: the United Nations. (President Barack Obama’s Speech to the United Nations)
Interestingly enough, there were 22 years in a row when I could have made the same speech (Okay, it would not have been rendered as eloquently as the President’s, but the content would have been similar.) The most disconcerting thing about this statement is that I was referring to the internal stakeholders of many hospitals. One of my favorite statements during those years because of all of the infighting was that “We are not the enemy.”
An enormous amount of energy is expended in almost every healthcare organization on internal power struggles. In many cases these struggles revolve around issues relating to money. Questions like “Should the radiologist or the cardiologist be permitted to perform one particular test?” Turf battles over procedures always seem to be part of the equation. Other struggles revolve around perceived power relating to whatever positions are held because someone wants more control of larger pieces of the budget.
Power, control, greed? All of these traits are part of the human experience, but when an organization expends much of its energy on these issues, the result is wasted time, wasted resources, wasted anguish, and, in many cases, lower quality outcomes.
Watching old movies of workers in factories during World War II have always fascinated me because we, as a country, had found a common enemy toward which we could focus our angst. The fact that health care never seemed to be able to embrace illness as the common enemy always created intrigue for me. Yes, we would rally and work together when emergencies hit, but the other daily activities became somewhat mundane and boring, and our instinct seemed to be to revert to power, control, and greed.
Maybe, just maybe, we could find a way to marshal the medical staff, employees, and administration, the volunteers, and patient families to work together every day in every way to create an actual healing environment where patients can be surrounded with the energy of love, kindness, respect, dignity, and healing. Maybe this environment could be the goal of every hospital executive, and they could begin and end each day by focusing on setting the example for the creation of a healing environment.
I’m working in Chicago right now, feeling a little overwhelmed by a phone call that I had from one of my very dearest friends about his impending future, about my son-in-law in Baghdad and his family who are living without him at home, and also about the challenges that we individually and collectively face both nationally and internationally during this time of economic crisis and overall unrest. During the midst of my thoughtful contemplation, I received an E-mail from a very dear friend, Savery, with a link to open. I was so moved by it that I decided to post the link on Facebook.
Almost immediately after it went out, my friend, Dr. Dean Ornish, sent me this follow up link from Bill Moyer’s show. For those of you who don’t know this about me, the Bill Moyers series, “Healing and the Mind” was my inspiration for the Planetree Philosophy that we implemented at Windber all those years ago. For some reason, he and I keep intersecting, and here we are again.
So, thanks, Savery, Dean, and Bill, but most of all, thanks to the amazing man who created this wonderful experience that you are all about to have.
F. Nicholas “Nick” Jacobs, FACHE, is Senior Partner at (SMR) Senior Management Resources, LLC. In that capacity he provides transformative, strategic solutions to companies, organizations and individuals. He has decades of experience in hospital management, with an acknowledged reputation for innovation and consumer-centered leadership.
Throughout his career, Mr. Jacobs has developed a reputation for innovative leadership that focuses on effective delivery of service that puts the patient’s needs and concerns first. He speaks extensively on this topic and has spoken for the American College of Healthcare Executives, American Hospital Association, and the World Health Organization numerous times.
These are just a few of the very effective mechanism that can be introduced to create healing environments in hospitals. Healing gardens, labyrinyths, 24 hour visiting, double beds in the OB suites, and the beat goes on and on with decorative fountains, fireplaces, skylights, balconies, but most importantly dignity and respect amongst all staff and visitors toward patients. So, “Healing Hospital” has multiple meanings. Healing will take place more quickly, thoroughly, and meaningfully in these facilities, and the entire staff will be charged with the promotion of healing by creating an overall healing environment.
