Healing a hospital
Broward Health’s interim chief brushes aside politics.
The new interim chief executive officer of Broward Health said Tuesday her priorities for fixing the troubled public hospital system include a focus on patient care, fixing a backlog in physicians contracts and employee morale.
Pauline Grant, who was appointed March 16, said in an interview she didn’t want to discuss the politics swirling around the district, with Gov. Rick Scott’s decision to suspend board Chairman David Di Pietro and board audit committee Chairman Darryl Wright.
“We want to make sure our employees and physicians are engaged because without being engaged they’re not going to be able to provide that care at the bedside,” said Grant, who for the past 13 years has run Broward Health North, the system’s second-largest hospital. “It all happens at the bedside, and that’s what my focus is. There are things that I can control, and I’m going to concentrate on the things that I can control.”
Since returning from vacation on Monday, she has met with managers and established priorities with 30-day and90-day timelines. An urgent task is fixing a delay in signing many physicians to long-term contracts, an issue that led managers at two hospitals to warn they may be forced to turn away patients seeking basic care.
At a Broward Health board meeting two weeks ago, Dr. Louis Yogel, chief of staff at Broward Health Medical Center, said the hospital was at risk of lacking specialists to handle trauma patients and said “patient care at Broward Health is hanging by a thread.”
Grant said she spoke thisweek with Yogel and that the doctors’ contracts at that hospital should be wrapped up in amatter of weeks.
“We have the assurance that those doctors will have their contracts,” she said. “There will be no interruption of services.”
Grant will serve as chief executive until a permanent one can be hired. The Broward Health board on Wednesday will consider the hiring of an executive search firm to find candidates, but that process will take months. In the meantime, Grant, who worked herway up the ranks, said she will focus on helping doctors and staff do their jobs.
“I’ve been here for 23 years. I love Broward Health. Broward Health has been good to me, and I feel it’s important to give back to Broward Health,” she said. “I’m going to domy absolute best that we concentrate on the core values, what’s going to drive us, what’s going to make us really great and important to the community.”