TO NEW HEIGHTS

However, her connection to Methodist Healthcare goes back even further- as far back as any person’s connection can go. Susan was born at Methodist Hospital.

After receiving her nursing degree, Susan continued to work at Methodist Hospital, creating meaningful change that impacted the patient experience. She collaborated with administration to expand the Emergency Department, implementing Point of Care testing for cardiac markers to improve turnaround times by seventy-five percent on assessment of patients with chest pain at time of triage. She would go on to hold several nursing positions at the hospital, but was ultimately destined to leave her patient’s bedside to help a greater number of people each day.

Two Methodist Hospital Units Receive Silver Beacon Award For Excellence

Congratulations to the CVICU and NSICU teams at Methodist Hospital, recipients of the Silver Beacon Award for Excellence, presented by AACN. This achievement is a significant milestone on the path to exceptional patient care and healthy work environments.

The Silver Beacon Award for Excellence signifies an effective approach to policies, procedures, and processes that includes engagement of staff and key stakeholders. It also signifies the units have evaluation and improvement strategies in place and good performance measures when compared to relevant benchmarks.

The Silver Award winners met the following evidence-based Beacon Award for Excellence criteria:

• Leadership Structures and Systems

• Appropriate Staffing and Staff Engagement

• Effective Communication, Knowledge Management and Learning and Development

• Evidence-Based Practice and Processes

• Outcome Measurement

Despite her outstanding success, Susan still sees the process as a big chess game. “The best care is local so we continue to work to get care out to rural facilities. We also need to continue creating capacity to serve those patients needing care in our Methodist Healthcare facilities. Every patient is so important,” she said.

Other innovative programs developed by Susan include the MHS South Texas Tele Stroke Network, which was implemented in 12 rural facilities, and the VIA (Very Important Athlete) Sports Medicine Program. Her leadership and vision have also been recognized with many honors including the Methodist Excellence Pillar Award and the inaugural DAISY Award for Patient Flow.

In 2009, Methodist Hospital was receiving requests from several hospitals outside the system with patients desperately needing to come to the hospital. Methodist Hospital often didn’t have vacant beds, but other hospitals in the system did. Jaime Wesolowski, President and CEO of Methodist Healthcare at the time, challenged Susan to determine a way to help place all patients seeking our care with just one phone call.

“The need inspired me,” she said. “We learned that we couldn’t be just a transfer center. We had to place patients in the right beds at the right time. We are one of the first systems in the country to centralize bed management and transfer center functions into a singular patient flow management center.”

That same year, Susan developed the MHS Patient Management Center, Centralized Patient Placement Center and Centralized Transfer Center for the Division. The Patient Management Center streamlines the patient admission process for nine facilities within Methodist Healthcare representing approximately 2,200 beds, coordinating several thousand patients each week within San Antonio as well as outlying regions from El Paso to McAllen and everywhere in between.

While operational excellence, innovation, and accolades have certainly been key to Susan’s career growth, perhaps a more imperative accomplishment is being a leader others wish to follow. “Susan is the finest example of a servant leader that I have ever encountered in my 25 years in the nursing field,” said Chillon Montgomery, Director of Trauma. “She has integrity, courage, loyalty, empathy, compassion, and most importantly peer and team respect. She inspires me to be a better leader by always making the hard decisions easy by acting in the best interest of our patients and partners. Her constant drive for excellence makes me work harder every day to never disappoint her or the vision we all live by.”

Susan’s career at Methodist Healthcare is truly an inspiration. The former Blue Jay is an example of how high any employee can fly if they’re willing to spread their wings.

“I went to work at Methodist because of our mission of serving humanity to honor God with the focus of making healthcare accessible to all,” she said. “We are truly different from other hospitals. We live in a dynamic time with access to incredible technology and knowledge, yet our commitment to the patient never waivers.”