
Session Details
01X - Developing Leaders to Innovate Breakthrough Solutions for Margin Shortfalls and Workforce Shortages
Monday, March 20
10:00–11:30 a.m.
Crushing budget shortfalls, month after month? Facing unprecedented nursing and workforce shortages, causing quality issues, staff morale and burnout, and drain on profitability? Are your traditional PI approaches and benchmarking not up to the task? You are not alone. ACHE research revealed that these two issues are top CEO concerns. Baton Rouge-based Franciscan Missionaries of Our Lady Health System charted a solutions course, with ACHE faculty member Kevin Cook, system COO, and Kristin Wolkart, system CNO, concluding that traditional approaches alone were not up to the task. Instead, they discerned that frontline leadership must become adaptive change agents. Using a Leader Development and Accountability Program, over 500 leaders innovated over 10,000 changes, averaging 20 changes per leader over 12 months. The heart of the program focuses on providing up to two hours per month of coaching by specially trained internal middle managers in the topics of implementing grassroots changes, overcoming obstacles and resistance, increasing confidence, accountability, and driving self-implemented initiative vs complex PI projects, corporate task forces, and “from-the-top” approaches.
Learning Objectives
- Convey structural and cultural factors driving speed and accountability of implementation by middle managers that led to over $110 million in margin improvement in 12 months.
- Take home leader development practices to replicate implementation of difficult process changes by the nurse, clinical and support middle manager team.
Presented By

Kristin Wolkart, RN, FACHE, NEA-BC
EVP/System CNO