Five Questions With: Jennifer La Luz

Care New England Health System recently announced that Jennifer La Luz was appointed as executive director of operations for Kent County Memorial Hospital, a new role for the hospital. La Luz spoke with Providence Business News about her new role. PBN: What are your goals for your new position? LA LUZ: Dr. [Paari] Gopalakrishnan's strategic plan has righted the Kent Hospital ship and brought us through a turbulent time in health care. My main goal is to support that direction by developing and implementing strategies around growth and efficiency. Increasing access to ambulatory testing and finding innovative ways to improve continuity of care are top of my list. I am also excited to be in a position that will allow me to engage with the community, building relationships with external partners and key community health partners. PBN: What made you decide to go into health care leadership? LA LUZ: When I was a senior in college, I didn't know what I would do when I graduated. What I was clear on, though, is that I wanted what I did every day to matter, to have an impact. Health care is something that every person in our community needs and uses at some point in their lives, and the longer I worked in the field, the more I wanted to help make every person's experience with health care better. That includes the experience of the health care worker. One of the most satisfying parts of working in health care administration is when you've helped to improve a process or system to make it easier for a nurse, doctor, or any staff to help their patients. The best way I can try to make a difference in the experience of patients and health care workers has been in leadership. PBN: What factors do you think contributed the most to Kent Hospital earning several new recognitions under your tenure as senior director of quality and access? LA LUZ: Several things aligned over the last five-and-a-half years to earn Kent Hospital multiple recognitions for excellence in the care we provide. The first is that on every initiative, we had a truly interdisciplinary team that worked together toward the goal of elevating the care we provide. Physicians, nursing and ancillary department leadership were all involved in every step in the journey to achieve these accreditations and certifications. Senior leadership support and focus on patient safety and clinical quality was key; our president, chief medical officer and chief nursing officer have been clear about their goals around quality, which helped focus our teams when there are so many priorities and projects going on in a hospital system. But the most important factor is that the care at the bedside is second to none. My role as director of quality was really to help create a structure to allow our bedside care teams to do what they do best - take care of people. PBN: What are some challenges you've noticed in improving access to testing services? LA LUZ: Testing services are such an important part of a patient's health care experience. The clinical information collected from testing drives the direction of a patient's care, so quick, uncomplicated access is critical. We usually think about shortages in health care workers as not having enough nurses and doctors, but there are so many other roles that are difficult to recruit for, such as MRI technicians, mammography technicians and other specialized health care staff. Ensuring we have testing facilities in the places where patients need services is another challenge in making sure that patients can get the testing they need in their community. The recent effects of the [Washington Bridge] closure have amplified that, making travel across our little state more difficult. PBN: How have you, or do you plan to, address those? LA LUZ: We are actively in the process of building new testing sites around the state. For example, earlier this year we added ultrasound testing to our Pawtucket site, and we brought in a third CT scanner to the Kent Hospital campus. That has had an extremely positive impact on our patients' ability to get imaging quickly. We've also been working hard on a new nuclear medicine stress testing site in Providence, which will open for appointments in mid-October. In terms of staffing, I plan to work with our talent acquisition team, local colleges and our STEM [science, technology, engineering and math] high schools to create a pipeline of students who are interested in health care and want to make a difference in their community. Katie Castellani is a PBN staff writer. You can reach her at Castellani@PBN.com.