Lebanon
The survey — which received 7,000 responses, some 75 percent of the organization’s employees — aimed to evaluate whether employees were willing to go above and beyond to support each other and their patients, said Stephen LeBlanc, who currently is serving as D-H’s co-interim chief executive.
It also asked employees to answer questions about their feelings of wellness, their ability to disconnect from their work and their levels of stress and anxiety, he said.
The organization earned a score of 3.73 out of 5 on a scale created by D-H’s vendor Press Ganey Associates.
“That’s lower than we wanted to be,” LeBlanc said.
LeBlanc declined to share the details of the survey’s findings, saying the organization plans to provide details to its employees over the coming weeks. An internal memo announcing the score went out to employees on Thursday.
He did say, however, that one of the areas in which the organization hopes to improve is internal communication.
“One of the most frustrating things for an employee is to find out things in the newspaper that weren’t communicated” internally first, he said.
He attributed the lower-than-desired survey results to a high degree of change over the past year. Such changes have included a reduction in force of 84 workers last year in response to a $12.2 million deficit for the year ending on June 30, 2016, as well as the departures of several top executives.
Former chief executive James Weinstein completed a six-year stint at D-H’s helm on June 30. Since then, that role has been filled by co-interim chief executives LeBlanc, the organization’s chief administrative officer, and Dr. Edward Merrens, who is a hospitalist and D-H’s chief clinical officer.
D-H’s incoming chief executive Dr. Joanne Mather Conroy, who previously served as CEO of Lahey Hospital and Medical Center in Burlington, Mass., starts on Monday.
Conroy, an anesthesiologist and 1977 Dartmouth College graduate, attributed the organization’s difficulties to broader issues in health care, in an emailed statement on Thursday.
“Dartmouth-Hitchcock is not immune to the challenges facing the rest of the health care industry, but I am absolutely confident that through transparent leadership, clear communication, and a collective dedication, we will continue to improve upon the D-H experience for our patients and community,” she wrote.
LeBlanc also expressed a positive outlook, saying he saw reasons to be heartened by the survey results.
“Regardless of what their feedback was, they wanted to express themselves,” he said of D-H employees. “They care about the institution and what’s going on.”
LeBlanc also was glad to see a high score in employees’ readiness for change.
“We’ve got work to do,” he said. And, they are “willing to do that work.”
Nora Doyle-Burr can be reached at ndoyleburr@vnews.com or 603-727-3213.
