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Becker’s Healthcare Podcast
Prioritizing Quality and Growth at Northwestern Medicine Delnor Hospital
00:14:50
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- [00:02]
A
Every year, Becker's annual meeting brings healthcare leaders together to unpack the most pressing issues facing the industry. And every year, those conversations shift in profound and unexpected ways. This April, more than 3,500 healthcare executives will return to Chicago for Becker's 16th annual meeting. 795 elite speakers will offer new lessons, new case studies, and predictions about what comes next. Join us April 13th through the 16th. For the agenda and event details, visit BeckersHospitalReview.com and click on the events tab in the upper right.
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B
This is Laura Deardo with the Becker's Healthcare Podcast. I'm thrilled today to be joined by Emily Jacques, president of Northwestern Medicine Delano Hospital. Emily, it's a pleasure to have you on the podcast today.
- [00:50]
C
Thank you, Laura. Great to be here. Happy New Year.
- [00:52]
B
Absolutely. Now, I'm excited for our conversation because I know there's so much happening in health care and, you know, you're doing some really unique and interesting things, especially around quality of care and everything you're doing to serve the community better in 2026. And so I'm looking forward to learn more about that. But before we dive in, can you tell me a little bit more about yourself and Delore Hospital?
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C
Certainly. I originally hail from the great state of Michigan, but have lived in the Chicagoland area since about 2008, working in healthcare for the entire time I've been in the Chicagoland area. I've been with Northwestern Medicine about a year and a half. It's been wonderful and really have just been so honored to serve here in Geneva at Delnir Hospital in the Fox valley. We are 159 bed, level two trauma hospital. I like to say that Del Nor acts like a bigger hospital than it is with an incredibly robust SO surgical and outpatient platform. We've got an incredibly beautiful, recently renovated cancer center where we're routinely serving over 100 patients a day between infusion and radiation oncology services. We have a family medicine residency program on this campus, so we're certainly doing some teaching here. And it's growing. We have renovation projects similar to a lot of other hospitals underway every single day. So it's a, it's a wonderful place serving a wonderful, growing community.
- [02:32]
B
That's fantastic to hear. And, you know, I think it's so important to have that ability to serve the community and understand what they need to live there and really be integrated into everything that that's happening on a local level. You know, when you think back the last year or so, what was the most important initiative you led? What did you do and what were the results?
- [02:54]
C
Great question. So I actually joined Northwestern and Del Nor in August of 2024. So 2025 was really my first year here. So I would be remiss if I didn't say going through my team this incredible leadership transition so smoothly with such incredible results is something I'm so proud of. We have an incredible executive team here at Delnor and had a lot of good opportunity to promote a lot of folks from within, make sure that we are developing our leaders. We focused a lot on leadership development just to make sure that the reality of a major leadership transition is a big shift for a culture and for an organization. And I'm just incredibly proud of how well that went and how warm of a welcome I received. And I think we're just. Delnor's done incredible work predating me, and I'm just glad to be a part of it going forward. One of the things that I'm most proud of is what we're here to do is serve our patients and our quality performance. My team has a target and then they look at the max target and set that as their target. So we perform just incredibly well across the board on many of our our health outcomes and quality scores, namely mortality, safety, efficiency, equity. In our vizient cohort of complex medical centers, we finished the year ranking number three out of 211 hospitals. And again, that is meeting top, decile or above in all of our key metrics. So one unit, when you score that high, maintaining it then becomes the next challenge. But it's something we're just incredibly proud of. And it's one patient at a time every day and it's something we talk about every single day.
- [04:56]
B
Absolutely. I love that. And, you know, being able to have that type of quality care and, you know, focus in putting some of those targets in place for the team and knowing that it's going to improve outcomes and make a big difference for the community is so, so helpful. I'm curious, you know, when you were looking at putting some more of those scores in place, in following them and tracking them and thinking about safety as well as outcomes and equity and everything else, how did you really keep your team focused and help them, you know, work through any challenges so that they could come out the other end making some big improvements?
- [05:36]
C
Yeah, there was a really great infrastructure here when I arrived. And I would say, say we just continue to sharpen the pencil. We have our, you know, safety and quality performance improvement committee. We have a number of kind of department and service line specific work groups. As well. One thing that I think really helped us move the needle, we have a top five, our safety and quality top five, every single year. And those are the top five things that drive our focus and keep us focused. Not many have changed this year, but we have falls, we have ambulation keeping our patients moving. We have safe handoffs. Our top five has a team around each one of our core measures. And I think that that allows us to take the number of things that are thrown at our leaders all the time to really focus on what matters, not only for the experience and the outcomes of our patients, but can also drive the results.
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B
Got it. That makes a lot of sense. Thank you so much for digging a bit deeper there. Now, looking ahead, what are some of the big priorities and headwinds you're focused on for 2026?
- [06:49]
C
Yeah, I mean, I think like many organizations and, you know, speaking from the far west suburbs of the Chicagoland area, all of our emergency rooms are just getting slammed right now. And it feels like. And the data is telling us that volume, whether it's stable or up, acuity is certainly up. So I would say a big conversation on our leadership teams is around throughput. How are we managing. We're running out of beds faster than we thought we would, namely because our patients are sicker. So how are we managing those cases? How are we bringing a full team together to make sure we have a good care plan? Actually, our team in the ED is doing just such a phenomenal job. We're starting care in the. In the waiting room. And not only do we have two kind of key triage spots in our waiting room, but we're actually caring for patients and discharging patients who otherwise don't need to be there from the waiting room. We are just trying to move care up as much as we can because we're trying to manage that aspect of throughput. So I'd say that's a daily, hourly conversation and making sure that both we are staffed appropriately to manage the changing nature of this care, that we're doing it in a safe way, and that we have the wellness of our staff in mind, making sure that we're appropriately staffed and making sure that people are getting what they need through every shift. That's a very big conversation, especially smack dab in the middle of a really tough flu season. So I'd say operationally that's the top priority, a top headwind. I'm confident all of my colleagues around the country are keeping an eye on our state and our federal healthcare policy changes. Just, I think over the weekend, the Rural Transformation Fund out of Washington was announced. We're just starting to get information at the state level on what that means for the rural. The rural transformation dollars that will go to some of the rural hospitals. I don't even know what that means for us locally yet. But I can tell you we're all keeping a really close eye on what's changing. The status of our Medicaid patients, the status of our state budgets. These are all, and I call them when we look at our financials, even if our volume is up, we have to understand the impact of these headwinds and what our managing our expenses looks like going forward just so we can navigate those waters.
- [09:31]
B
Absolutely. That's such a great point. You know, it's really interesting to hear you talk about all of these things because I know, especially when you are thinking about the legislative changes, those policies could be updated at any point. You have to stay nimble. And then thinking about the financial challenges. But also, you know, potentially getting some additional funds for the Rural Health Transformation Fund would be exciting. So I'm curious, how are you thinking about, you know, the next 12 months or so? What is the hardest thing you're going to have to do? How are you looking at all of these things and continuing to pivot and grow your teams?
- [10:07]
C
The hardest thing, I think all of us jump into health care because every day is game day. That's what I like to say. Every day is interesting in our jobs. I think the hardest thing continues to be prioritization. There are so many areas, so many programs, so many teams that, you know, need investment. There's so many great innovations coming down the path. There's replacements we need to do. Prioritizing those projects, I think for a leadership team becomes the hardest part of the job. There's a finite number of dollars, especially when you're in a health system, when you're thinking about things like strategic capital, you can't fund at all. So I think what we're trying to do is really roll up our sleeves and understand the why you can't always prioritize things that have a positive return on the investment. Some things are safety issues. Some things are about meeting needs of our community or meeting needs of our campus. So we're really focused on making sure we have all the information, all of the data, so we can make the best informed decisions when it comes to priorities on this campus.
- [11:18]
B
That's fascinating to hear, and I really like your point about staying focused on having the right priorities. And when you Talk about having the information, having the data and more power at your fingertips there. What does it look like for you or has the journey been to incorporate that data into your decision making process and making sure on the technology side, you know, all the data and technology that goes into it is really strong and dependable.
- [11:44]
C
Yeah. I mean, yeah. Ask a lot of good questions, listen as best we can, and make sure we have the right people at the table. Again, when you're a part of a health system like Northwestern, we're grateful to have a lot of new things vetted at the system level. Will this integrate with our systems? You know, is this product safe? Is it in our. Is it within kind of the usable function of our supply chain? Whatever, whatever the new thing may be, a lot of vetting gets done at our system level. We need to make sure that it fits. So we need to make sure we have the right nurse leaders at the table, physician leaders at the table, operational leaders at the table, our support services, our ambulatory and outpatient function. Our team likes to have that really comprehensive, diverse numbers are numbers. Data can tell lots of different stories. It's the users to make sure that our teams help us understand the why that start to really inform the prioritization.
- [12:52]
B
That is so helpful to know and understand. Thank you, Emily. And before we wrap up, I wanted to talk about growth as well. Where do you see some of the best opportunities for growth in the next year?
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C
You know, specifically for us in our market, we have an incredibly robust ambulatory and outpatient platform. More and more patients are requiring kind of a complex workup. So our imaging and diagnostic imaging modalities are busy. You know, I'm sure everyone is focused on this, but I'd say you can always do more at looking at how you're looking at your schedules, your accents, and your ability to make sure you're getting your patients in and through for your diagnostic imaging department. It's just a huge growth opportunity for our campuses. Our surgical platform here is robust. You know, we're 159 bed hospital and we have a tertiary campus to our east that we refer higher acuity things to. But that makes us a really great, great bread and butter operating facility where we start on time, we can, you know, be really efficient, we can add on cases, and that's been a really attractive thing for some of our surgeons and proceduralists. So I'd say for us, where we're really focused on growth, our procedural areas, our diagnostic imaging areas, and our ambulatory platform, including our oncology and Cancer Center.
- [14:19]
B
That's amazing to hear a lot of exciting things upcoming. So, Emily, thank you so much for joining us on the podcast today. This has been a really fun discussion to have, and I'm looking forward to seeing you as well at our annual meeting. I know coming up here in April, you'll be speaking on a panel, and it'll be just really fantastic to hear a little bit more about some of the things we're talking about today, as well as how it's continuing to make an impact on the communities you serve.
- [14:44]
C
Really looking forward to it. We always love the Beckers Conference.