Drive Time Songs to Sing Along With

What song makes you turn the music up real load and sing a long? This week while driving I noticed that a certain song came on and I immediately turned it up and started singing out loud.
I always have the radio or CDs on in the car but I hadn't noticed that there are some songs that immediately I turn up, while others just go unnoticed in the background.

So to end the summer I thought I would ask you - what songs make you sing out loud?

There are many for me but this particular one was "What I like about you" and I know one of my colleagues on Senior Leadership will know who it is by but I know it makes me break out in a smile.

How about you?

Where did summer go?

I can't believe it is the middle of August already. Today was supposed to be my beach day off; the first Friday of play at the beach with no agenda. It is 2 pm and I am just now getting there. How does that happen? As a child I remember the biggest decision of the day being where I was going to ride my bike and which friend I would play with. How come as adults we get filled with responsibilities - errands, just one more email.

Senior Leadership has been teasing, but seriously concerned that I didn't take that week off this summer I had planned to. Part of it is I truly love what I do and always feel like there is more to do. For those chronic TOP day forfeiters - you know that you hear from me every September if you are over the maximum to be carried over. We all need to take time and rejuvenate; sometimes it is just harder to do than other times. Of course then I look at our kids - kids who have been in accidents who come to inpatient. You never know what is going to happen in life and it is so very important to nurture your soul as well as provide nurturing to everyone around you.

Are there tricks that you use to refresh that others could benefit from?Would love to hear and learn from you. In the meantime, I am going for a swim in the ocean.Amy

Adapting to the Changes in Health Care

Thank you all for your very helpful thoughts and suggestions. It was hard for me not to jump in and respond but I really believed it was important for you all to debate the relative merits of the suggestions that were put forward. As I explained previously, this is not an issue of not having a plan or even having the wrong plan, there are things that happen that are completely out of our control. Much like life, it is how you adjust to those changes that are unexpected that often define both our personal and professional success.

We will be making changes immediately to address the things we can address, contractual changes, keeping our appointments filled, redoubling our efforts on cancellations, aggressively hiring additional therapist, seeking additional long term care beds to address the kids who end up "stuck" in inpatient awaiting a bed - a whole host of things. We have all been giving our best and we need to continue that over the last five months of the year to close the $700K budget gap we find ourselves in. Senior Leadership is committed to continuing to look at every possibility to create savings, while still maintaining the quality of care and work environment that is so important to all of us.

You can see the passion in the many responses to the blog - people protecting their areas while offering up others. Many of you have written to me off line and made other suggestions. I am not going to respond individually to each of the suggestions that were made but know each suggestion was fully examined and considered. Some things we couldn’t change for safety reasons, others for equity, and others because we thought it wasn't the right thing to do for the organization.

The strategic planning process that we did in 2001 led to all of the great success we have had to date. It was a thoughtful plan of growth, balanced with getting our financial house in order. At key points we took stock of the plan, decided not to move forward on some projects and to move faster on others. The Board of Directors has charged us to build on that success and craft the vision for the next 3 to 5 years. We will present to them a strategic plan in September that will set the map for the future.

Having said that, much of the changes that will come before us will not be what is in that plan but things that are done to us by others. The bottom line is that health care is changing every day. These changes will be imposed upon us through regulatory, customer or payer demands. The key for us will be how agile we are in adapting to the changing environment. Paramount in all of our efforts is the desire to continue to provide high quality services to our children, have a good work environment for each of us to work in and that the organization remain financially viable.
I am asking you be part of solving the challenges we find ourselves with both short term and long term. We all have to be rowing our oars in the same direction. We will continue to examine the work we do - all of it. Continuing look for ways to do things better, smarter and constantly reviewing what businesses we are in and why we are in them. This is an organization of tremendous talent and heart.

We will get there - together.

Financial Update – What You Need to Know

There will be a lot of discussion from your Director's and Managers over the coming weeks about our need to find savings. Please do not take these discussions lightly. Our May financial results reported a current LOSS of $700,000 year to date.

This is not good for many reasons. First, and simply, it is never good to lose money. It is especially bad when people loaned you $57 million to build the new hospital in New Brunswick with the intent that we would make money and run our business efficiently.

The reasons for our current financial state are three fold which involve operations, inpatient and outpatient census. The first is that we have had higher costs, energy etc, that we couldn't have anticipated. Second, we were off just 1.3 days on inpatient census and that small amount reduces our revenue by almost $500,000 through May. Third, we are 13,000 “half-hour units” below where we need to be on the outpatient side and we are struggling to fill 12 open therapy positions. All of these things have left us in this predicament.

There is a light at the end of the tunnel and I’m happy to report our census has picked up on the inpatient side thanks to the great work of our admissions team and clinical staff.

We are currently examining all of our expenses and seeing if there are things we can push off until next year or do differently to receive immediate savings. I know that when we all pull together we will identify savings.

Our Foundation has graciously agreed to pay for our recognition around the NJBIZ gifts. We are so fortunate that they are always willing to step in and support us when they can.

I personally wanted to make sure that I gave you the most current information we have because I know the rumor mill has already started.

Of course your questions and suggestions are always welcome.

Congressional Update on War Supplemental Legislation

President Bush signed the War Supplemental legislation. This is the important legislation which includes the languages which continues the moratorium on the federal regulator from issuing regulations that would eliminate rehabilitation services for the majority of the children we serve.
The good news is that we bought ourselves some time, until the extension next April. The bad news is that the people who wrote this legislation will be there regardless of who is the next President. We are now going to begin a full effort to try and get to those regulators and educate them about the unique nature of what we do.

Thanks for all of you who sent emails and offered support to me as we fought this fight.

More to come.

Bring Our Story to Capitol Hill

On the road again - Last week Donna Provenzano, Dir. Family Centered Care, Child Life and Rec Therapy; Heather Valeo, Family Faculty member and Heather's five year old daughter Bella went to DC as part of a national effort by the National Association of Children's Hospitals.

The Valeo's were one of thirty families to sit with Members of Congress and their staff to tell our story. Members of congress will always see me as a "suit," a passionate suit who won't stop talking about Children's Specialized Hospital, but still a suit. It is when they can meet a family in person and hear directly from them what the services that we provide mean to their lives, there is absolutely nothing more powerful. We found that again this week.

After Heather told her story and I had gotten off my soap box about the injustice of the latest rules from the federal government that would eliminate Medicaid payments for any service where the child hadn't lost a skill but never had it in the first place, Congressman Ferguson offered his hand for Bella to shake. Being 5 she gave him a great big "squeezy" bear hug. And as long as she was up there, decided it would be a good time to play with his ears, because they were there for the taking. Being the father of 4 young children, Congressman Ferguson said he felt right at home. I guarantee you while he may have had 20 meetings that day, this is the one he will remember at the end of the day. Not my rants about CMS but Bella. And then when I go back the next time and ask for one more thing for the hospital, he will remind me of that wonderful day.

Advocacy is tough - it is not always about being right on the issues. It is about being right on the issues and touching someone's heart in the right way so they will stand up and fight for us. We are blessed with a Congressional delegation that will fight.

Part of the way we stay present, is the press stories. Please don't forget if you have great things going on with a child and you think the folks are willing, please hand those stories off to Rebecca Mazzarella. Elected officials read those stories and they help our case.

Meaningful Recognition

Our entire senior leadership team hopes you were surprised with our Best Places to Work recognition award – the choice of four CSH items. Please be sure to fill out your form and get it into Marketing before June 30. We can’t say thank you enough for helping us become the Best Place to Work in New Jersey!

The recognition I cherish are ones that only I see. One of the director's left me a note on my chair one day - "I appreciate you". One of our board members who has been involved with the organization for the better part of 40 years sent me a note to my home after our move to New Brunswick and said such kind things about how the organization has grown. There have been many times you have emailed me a thank you. I save them, cherish them and reread them when I need a boost. So for me the ones that mean the most come from the heart and are spontaneous.

How about you? Is there some recognition, or act of kindness, that has meant something to you at the work place that you would like to see more of?