DMBN: What are the biggest challenges facing your hospital and the health care industry in general today?

A major challenge faced by all academic medical centers - especially those located in New York City - is patient satisfaction outcomes. There are several factors related to these scores that are difficult to control, including the severity of the diseases treated and the complicated cases addressed, and the many different cultural backgrounds of our patients and staff resulting in communication challenges and differing preferences for treatments and care delivery. For this reason, we place a strong emphasis on the evaluation and implementation of new programs and initiatives to improve the patient's overall experience at the medical center. Everything we do is designed to make our patients feel good about coming to NYU Langone and provide them with outstanding and high-quality care. For example, we now offer a new seven-day-a-week hospital initiative. By eliminating the nine-to-five-weekday-only service barrier, we're able to deliver more convenient care, and more importantly, better care to meet our patients' medical needs. Changes such as this one help to improve the overall patient experience and our patient satisfaction outcomes and delivers on our promise of excellence.

DMBN: With reimbursement cuts and the current economic issues going on, what actions has your facility taken to cut costs and curb spending?

We are focused on becoming a more efficient organization and creating value that translates to the bottom line. That drove our decisions to offer non-emergent services beyond normal business hours to become a true seven-day-a-week hospital for all patient needs; the deployment of a real-time, integrated reporting dashboard demonstrating key performance indicators/metrics across the entire enterprise; and the implementation of a Lean Six Sigma management initiative designed to improve workflow to identify and eliminate waste and inefficiencies in the many processes that are part of the health care experience. Additionally, we continue to be successful relative to new physician recruitment and increased ambulatory volume in our strategic areas, strong managed care contracting, and ongoing revenue and expense cycle initiatives. These strategies have been in progress since I've arrived and we are continuing to see the benefits from the work that we have done.

DMBN: Are there any "green" or eco initiatives at your facility?

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