COVER STORY
When a Leader Leaves
Turn this often stressful situation into an advantage for your ASC BY SAHELY MUKERJI
L
osing a key person, such as the administrator or the director of
nursing, can have a catastrophic effect on an ASC. Or not.
“When our clinical nurse man- ager let us know that she’d retire, we developed a succession plan,” says Margaret G. Acker, RN, CASC, administrator of Southwest Surgical Center in Byron Center, Michigan. “We looked at all her duties, deter- mined that we needed two people to fill her role and began interviewing. She was here when the ASC opened, so she was the queen mother. Her job grew, but she continued to do it. When she left, we split the job into clinical manager, operating room (OR), and clinical manager, prep/ recovery. We hired both positions and gave them each three months with the retiring clinical nurse manager before she left the company.”
12 ASC FOCUS JUNE/JULY 2014
Acker learned her lesson about staff transitions early in her career. She was working per diem at another center when the owner terminated all of the ASC’s administrators and asked her to become the chief executive officer. “We divided up the work, figured out who knew what and determined what we needed to do to take care of our patients,” Acker says. “That experience taught me never to hoard knowledge and to share knowledge as much as possible.” In her current role, Acker requires her managers to know about The Joint Com- mission’s requirements for their areas and how to manage their colleagues’ areas. “For example, my prep recovery manager should be able to manage the OR team and vice versa, and I should be able to manage both teams,” she says. “The better you can educate your staff all the way around, the better prepared you will be when someone leaves.”
the business
At her current ASC, Acker says, manager
and clinical
manager are her backup. “In an ideal world, you’d have a succession plan, and every person would have a backup plan and an understudy,” she says. “If you have a job that only one person does, that’s a key person. Every role is vital. Cross-train as much as possible. Have every job well-defined and make the schedules available to everyone.” Continuing education that helps
staff keep up to date can also help an ASC prepare for a sudden loss of key personnel. “We send our staff to the Michigan ASC education conference, Becker’s conference and ASCA meet- ings, and we read trade journals, such as ASC Focus,” she says. “Most of our staff are college educated and are inter- ested in learning more.” In a non-ideal world, however,
when you don’t have a succession plan, “you get together and try to come up with a plan,” Acker says. “Your clini- cal people know what supplies you need and how many cases you could
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