Suz Fisher, RN, BA
Suz has more than 20 years of clinical and leadership experience in the healthcare industry. She is highly effective as a coach because of her willingness to share her journey and challenges as a staff nurse and leader, along with the best practices she utilized to overcome those challenges to drive effectiveness and engagement. Her partners find her straightforward style to be impactful and relatable, and Suz is skilled at explaining and discussing with leaders the “why, what, and how” of Studer Group methodology. She understands that an individualized approach is the best way to connect with all levels of an organization to drive outcomes and cultivate engagement.
Professional Experience
Suz joined Studer Group after 11 years at Sharp HealthCare, a recipient of the Malcolm Baldrige Award for quality. She is passionate about coaching partners to their highest levels of excellence and improving the quality of care provided to patients, as well as their perception of their experience. At Sharp HealthCare, Suz led her team to improve their patients’ perception of care from the 9th percentile to the 86th percentile and sustained those results consistently for more than six years. Suz attributes her success to developing talented leaders who learned to embrace accountability in order to engage a passionate workforce. She feels strongly that leadership development is and the key to implementing tactics that drive results. Suz is uniquely suited to coach staff members and leaders to truly understand the “why” behind the patient experience and inspire them to create a positive and caring culture. Her advice for healthcare leaders of the future is to never be afraid to have hard conversations and make difficult decisions when excellence in patient care and clinical quality is at stake.
Signature Engagements
- Skilled at coaching emergency departments of all sizes
- Validated tactics implemented for emergency department leadership and staff; expertly pinpointed wins, trends and opportunities for improvement and provided recommendations for further enhancements
- Coached a 400+ staff critical access hospital to increase employee engagement, moving the overall satisfaction from the 27th percentile in 2012 to the 90th percentile in 2016
- Improved HCAHPS by 9.9 percentage points for overall rating of care, 7.6 percentage points for responsiveness, 4.7 percentage points for nurse communication, 7.8 percentage points for cleanliness and decreased patient falls from 21 in 2013 to 11 in 2015
- Served as a valuable team member of the first healthcare provider in the state of California to receive the Malcolm Baldrige Quality Award
- Averaged overall patient satisfaction scores in the 86th percentile in national database from 2006 to 2011
Education and Certifications
- Bachelor of Arts, Healthcare Administration, Ashford University, Clinton, Iowa
- Associate Degree in Nursing, Maric College, San Diego, California
Professional Associations
- “From Caregiver to Patient: A Story from the Other Side of the Bedrails,” Studer Group Conference, March 2017
- “When a Nurse is the Patient: A Lesson in Empathy and Communication,” Studer Group Insight, February 2017