Q: What initially brought you to Johns Hopkins?

A: I came to work at Johns Hopkins in 1993, immediately after completing the doctoral program in health policy and management at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. I worked my way through college and graduate school doing construction, eventually starting my own small construction company. At the time that I accepted the position, there were several construction projects underway in the new outpatient center. Because of my background in construction, the vice president who hired me, Steve Lipstein, thought my experience would be put to good use in the projects nearing completion.

Q: What brought you to Sibley Memorial Hospital? What makes Sibley special?

A: I chose to come to Sibley because of the people, the patient-centered culture and the opportunity to innovate within an institution that enjoys a 127-year history of quality and excellence. I also was attracted to Sibley because of its unique attributes. Being located in Washington, D.C., during a period of unprecedented health care reform, along with our integration with Johns Hopkins Medicine, means that Sibley is ideally positioned to be a role model for innovation in health care and wellness for all and to help contribute to the development of new care delivery models. Sibley provides a full continuum of care, offering acute care, rehabilitation, assisted living, outpatient care, palliative care and home care, the latter of which is a joint undertaking with Suburban Hospital. And Sibley has a highly committed and skilled workforce who bring their best to work every day and are eager to explore creative approaches to excellent health care. They teach me something each day.

Q: What are some things that you brought to Sibley from your previous roles at Johns Hopkins?

A: At the Johns Hopkins Outpatient Center and at the Johns Hopkins Center for Innovation in Quality Patient Care, the precursor of today’s Armstrong Institute for Patient Safety and Quality, I had opportunities to both learn and work in quality, safety and performance improvement. I learned valuable lessons and subsequently brought many of those lessons and innovative approaches to improvement with me to Sibley. For example, our team at Johns Hopkins learned about the application of "lean" manufacturing principles (a quality control program pioneered by Toyota) and applied them to improve safety and general operations at Hopkins. Having been trained in research methodologies, I have a healthy respect for the scientific method, and I felt that lean introduced a certain rigor to the process of care delivery, in the same way that the scientific method lends rigor to research.

I also was exposed to human-centered design, a concept taught at the Stanford School of Design (now the Stanford d.school), and I had the opportunity to work with IDEO, a global design and innovation company in Palo Alto, California, on health care applications for this way of thinking.

At Sibley, we created an Innovation Hub where we use lean and design thinking together hand-in-hand. Lean helps to streamline and improve existing processes, and design thinking gives people the tools they need to create completely new approaches. Together, lean and design thinking helps us to identify innovative new ways to improve care delivery and the patient experience.

Q: Why is innovation in the health care setting important?

A: Innovation and creativity help to develop new solutions to solve old problems. In health care, we continue to look for ways to improve patient outcomes, enhance patient safety and increase operational efficiencies, but to address these challenges we often resort to the use of antiquated approaches that simply do not work. By applying the principles of the scientific method, lean and design thinking to problem-solving, new solutions emerge that can help us improve the care we provide.

Q: How do you encourage employees to think in ways that support innovation?

A: As a leader, it’s my job to knock down barriers that stop team members from being a part of developing and instituting improvements. We do this by encouraging employees to think in unconventional ways. We ask employees for their ideas on how to do their jobs better and encourage them to share those ideas, even if they may seem too “outside the box.” Our best innovations come from our team members, physicians and patients.

Q: What is Sibley’s role in helping other hospitals undertake similar innovation processes?

A: Academic medical centers play a big part in driving innovation, but community hospitals also have an important opportunity to share their on-the-ground learnings to help identify and operationalize changes that will shape the future of health care. There’s a national need to identify better care delivery methods and Sibley — because of our history, being part of Johns Hopkins Medicine and our willingness to embrace and drive change — is a great case study illustrating the impact of putting better processes to work. We take advantage of the health care delivery expertise available at Johns Hopkins and put that knowledge into practice here at Sibley. And we use lean and design thinking to translate that expertise in a way that works in a community hospital setting.

Q: What aspects of your role at Sibley bring you joy or inspire you?

A: I feel truly privileged to be in this role, representing the people who work here. I enjoy being part of a team that works together to serve our patients and their families. I’m inspired when I see our team members embrace innovative thinking to improve the patient and family experience and when I see a patient and his or her family experience world-class care and service.

Q: Where do you see Sibley in the next 10 years? The next 20?

A: I believe that Sibley will continue on the path of being a local and national leader in translating innovation to improve patient care, service and the experience of patients and families. Our outstanding team members provide a tremendously strong foundation. Building on our history, our link to Johns Hopkins Medicine, and our spirit of openness to implementing new ideas from our employees, Sibley will continue to be a destination for excellence and compassionate care — every person, every time.