"We use POPin to engage our nursing staff, in fact all of our employees, to ensure our site is the best place to work."
Lutheran Medical, an SCL Health System hospital, is a large 500+ bed community health center with over 1,500 nurses and associates. Dr. Tina Johnson, COO, oversees the hospital’s operations and is continuously managing employee retention. She estimates the cost of replacing a single nurse is upwards of $40,000, so Dr. Johnson is constantly seeking innovative approaches to engaging the staff to improve retention, and reduce operating costs.
Dr. Johnson looked to POPin to enable her leadership team to have a broad conversation across the organization. She was looking for insights into how Lutheran could be a great place to work as nurses and other staff balance 12-hour shifts with the rest of their busy lives. She leveraged POPin to ask “What one thing could we do to make this a convenient place for you to work and make the impacts on the rest of your life easier?” Through the POPin sessions, innovative ideas were gathered across the team, discussed and prioritized and ultimately implemented for the staff.
In addition, Dr. Johnson and her leadership team asked the care teams “What one idea do you have for improving how we care for patients in your area of care delivery?” Through this process, staff identified a number of ways to improve specific clinical workflows, improvements that not only positively impacted associates, but also enhanced the patient experience.
Giving over 1,500 associates a voice to help identify creative ways to help Lutheran Medical be a great place to work ultimately resulted in 6% turnover, far better than the national average. Additionally, empowering front-line employees to find ways to improve critical workflows improves the patient experience, and further contributes to employee satisfaction. Dr. Johnson projects another 1% reduction in turnover as a result of these efforts, and estimates Lutheran Medical will realize over $600k in savings this year.
