Located in the center of Dawson County, Nebraska, is Lexington Regional Health Center, a critical access hospital that has been on the Studer journey for over two years. Lexington Regional originally opened its doors in 1975 and has been a staple in the community ever since. The hospital is one of the largest employers in the county with over 220 dedicated and caring employees. Yet it is much more than a hospital; it has a robust visiting specialist clinic, busy surgery department, complete rehabilitation department with physical, occupational, and speech therapies, a full radiology department, and much more. Just over one year ago, Lexington Regional opened a walk-in Urgent Care, which saw over 7,000 visits in just its first year. The hospital is now preparing to expand by building a new Outpatient Service Center that will include new surgical suites and will be a central location for all its visiting specialists.
Lexington Regional Health Center has seen great success using the principles and tools outlined by Studer Group. In the fall of 2010, the hospital rolled out the Standards of Behavior and implemented patient rounding by senior executives. Rounding has been especially helpful in discovering patients' needs and wants; it has helped hospital leaders get to know their patients, and demonstrates their desire to ensure patients are receiving only the highest quality of care. It has become common for Lexington Regional patients to remark that they can tell the hospital has advanced; employees are happy to be there and they are seeing a difference in their overall care. This has been reflected in patient satisfaction scores that reached 98% in December 2011.
Studer has also helped Lexington Regional Health Center reduce its employee turnover from 24% to 16% in just one year, in large part due to the peer interviewing process. Monthly meeting models have opened up communication between supervisors and their employees to ensure that management is hearing their concerns and needs. Thank you notes have also helped employees feel they are an essential part of the team. A recent employee satisfaction survey showed that 82.4% of employees felt they were recognized for the work they had performed. Overall satisfaction was at 93%.
Jill Denker, Exec Dir, HR & Phys Liaison accepting the award with Bob Murphy on behalf of Lexington Regional Health Center
Led by the enthusiasm and drive of CEO Leslie Marsh, leaders at Lexington Regional Health Center have embraced the numerous tools set up by Studer. AIDET® , callbacks, the Leader Evaluation Manager® , LDIs, mandatory forums, and more have all become integrated into the culture of the hospital. Because of this commitment and positive results after implementing the tools, Lexington Regional was awarded the Excellence in Patient Care award at the What's Right in Healthcare conference in October 2012. The hospital was also been recognized by Studer as a top ten performer in nurse communication.
The team at Lexington Regional Health Center is honored to be Studer's Organization of the Month for December. The future holds great changes and even more progress for the organization, and the Studer principles, along with Lexington Regional's extraodinary team, will aide in their continued success.