One of the comments I received during my first week of blogging (Note: I didn't even know what a Blog was up until a month ago!), was the following: "What exactly does a COO for a regional medical center do? I mean, do you worry primarily about facilities and such or do you have pt care responsibility or quality or ?? How are you tied into the trainsition?"
Wow, a lot to think about and answer. Basically, anything operational falls under the scope of responsibility of the COO. I work with a great administrative team. Karen Buckley, the CNO, and Robyn Gonzales and Jim Hiney, the Associate Administrators report to me, and I in turn report to the CEO, Jack Chubb. The CFO, Joe Nowicki, also reports to Jack.
Beyond the reporting structure, perhaps the easiest way to answer this reader's question might be to give you a glimpse into just a couple of the issues on my calendar this past week. For example, every Monday I participate in the Transition Planning Steering Committee. It's here that we iron out all the global details related to relocating the inpatient services from UMC to the CRMC campus - where the nursing units from UMC will be relocated into the CRMC, licensing beds, timelines, etc. Tuesday morning, I participated in a presentation, along with Jack Chubb, Bruce Kinder, Mark Mathieson, and Dr. Joan Voris where we shared our plans for Transition with the Board of Trustees. It can be a little nerve-wracking to present to the Board, but we packed in months of planning and operational details into a fast-paced 55 minute presentation! It certainly doesn't hurt to do a few practice runs with your material before presenting to a large group.
Other issues this past week included finalizing the RN recruiting plan with Human Resources on how we are going to fill open staff positions and those occupied by Travelers. There were several physician and equipment contracts that I reviewed for approval, and I attended meetings on quality of our Total Joint Replacement program and performance improvement for Patient Flow.
All in all, I really enjoy what I do and where I work. I find that being an administrator in healthcare requires a certain amount of creativity and I like that challenge. Now, let's see what this next week brings!