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Expanded meditation and wellness programs, a certified nursing assistant academy and added opportunities for research are among the recent initiatives at Wallingford’s Gaylord Specialty Healthcare spearheaded by President and CEO Sonja LaBarbera.
LaBarbera, 49, took the top job at Gaylord in 2019 and soon faced the challenge of dealing with the disruption of the COVID-19 pandemic while keeping the nonprofit health system’s expansion on track.
During the worst of the pandemic, LaBarbera worked to stabilize the system, moving many of its rehabilitation programs into the hospital setting while endeavoring to maintain staff morale. In the years since, she has expanded efforts to support Gaylord’s nearly 1,000 employees while adding programs and facilities.
Searchable database: The Top Workplaces of 2023
LaBarbera is 2023 winner of the Top Leader award in the large employers category in the Hearst Connecticut Media Top Workplaces contest; she also won in 2021. She spoke with Hearst about her efforts to support Gaylord’s workers and expand its services. The conversation was edited for clarity and length. Click here to see how the winners list was made.
You took the job of president and CEO a year before COVID hit. What has been the pandemic’s impact at Gaylord?
Some of the topics that are most relevant in a post-COVID world do relate to the workforce. It’s not only about finding and recruiting and retaining staff, but the needs of the staff are different in a post-COVID world. We put in a lot of wellness programs, programs focused on staff resiliency, teaching them just how to take a moment and sort of regroup and refresh during the day. You almost have to give people permission to take care of themselves. Then they’re better to take care of the patients. So much of what we do here is about really providing the patients with individualized care and making sure that they have everything that they need. If we don’t apply that same theory to our employees, then they can’t give their best to the patients at the bedside.
What are some of those new programs?
We’ve done a lot with mindfulness and meditation: We brought in facilitators from the Copper Beech Institute to help train our staff to be mindfulness facilitators for both patients and staff. We have this beautiful 400-acre campus here, so we encourage employees to take time outside. We’ve created some specific garden spaces that both patients and staff can go out to to get some fresh air.
We’ve tried to look at flexible scheduling; we’ve done some creative things with job shares and with some different shift lengths. People want flexibility and they want a wellness focus. We’ve also brought back all of our employee recognition programs. We got away from that all during COVID, and now we’re trying to bring it back because it does help with retention. If people feel connected to their employee family, it’s easier to stay in a job.
Many health-care systems have reported great difficulty in finding and hiring qualified staff in the post-COVID era. What has Gaylord done to address workforce issues?
We’ve started our own certified nursing assistant (CNA) academy. We found that we weren’t really able to find qualified, certified nursing assistants, enough of them to meet our needs. After they are trained, we hire many of them right into staff positions afterward.
With nurses, we’re doing a lot more collaboration with local universities to create pipelines and add clinical placements. We’re taking a lot more nursing students, a lot more therapy students, to give them the experience here because if they have a good student experience here, it’s a great recruitment opportunity. We also have a nurse residency program.
The other big thing from an academic standpoint and creating a pipeline of jobs here is we started a physical medicine and rehab residency program two years ago in collaboration with UConn and Hartford HealthCare. Prior to that, you couldn’t train as a rehab physician in Connecticut — the residencies were either in New York, Boston or other areas of the country.
Is the health-care hiring crunch easing up from your perspective?
It’s getting a little easier, at least for us. We’ve had a few great months as far as recruiting staff — now the key is keeping them. We’ve seen our retention numbers get significantly better over the last two years. I think the schools in Connecticut are doing a really good job of building that pipeline back up. And now it’s our responsibility to get them properly trained, hire them and retain them.
What other new programs have helped attract staff to Gaylord?
We opened the Milne Institute for Healthcare Innovation in 2020. We started doing a lot more clinical research, and we’ve been involving bedside clinicians in clinical research. In a lot of places people do research, but they have to do it all themselves. We created an infrastructure with the Milne Institute where we have research scientists that are helping and partnering with the clinician, so they’ve got the infrastructure to really make it easier.
About two years ago we also launched an innovation committee — what we’re really trying to do is gather innovative ideas from frontline clinicians and staff members. There are QR codes hanging up all over the hospital and if you have an innovative idea either for a problem to solve or a product that we might need to look into developing, you can click this QR code and submit it. The top idea that came out of this process last year was the CNA academy, which has already trained six cohorts of eight CNA students. This innovation committee really is another way for people to be engaged in improving care, improving practice here.
What are some challenges you are facing now?
Costs have skyrocketed for everything from supplies to drugs to staff and reimbursement has not been commensurately increased. It is becoming more challenging to have a profitable business model when costs are up and reimbursement is still lagging. We’ve spent a lot of time talking to the state, talking to our federal legislators about the fact that the current model of reimbursement may not be sustainable. We have to look for more cost-effective ways to do what we do.
What are some growth areas for Gaylord?
People want to age gracefully. They want to age at home. And so you know, as a provider of physical medicine and rehab, our focus is really improving function, and helping people maintain their highest level of function throughout their life. I think there’s always going to be a need for those services and I think even more so in the years to come.
I’m spending a lot of time talking to community leaders, thought partners, industry leaders and finding out what they need. What are they looking for in an innovative healthcare provider and how can we do things differently? Because I think if you’re too internally focused, and you’re not looking outward to the community and what the needs are in the community, you’re going to miss opportunities.
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