Kathleen Ferket, MSN, APRN-PC
Senior Consultant
Kathleen Ferket (MSN, APRN-PC), one of our senior consultants at ACUOCARE , is a healthcare clinician and executive with a passion for quality improvement and enhancing transitions of care. She has a wide range of expertise in care management and coordination, population health, and value-based care, as well as strategic leadership development.
She’s a thought leader in care management and was instrumental in the development and implementation of the American Case Management Association’s Transition of Care standards. She also co-led a six-month project with Duke University Health System, Memorial Hermann Healthcare System, Tenet Healthcare Corporation, Trinity Health, and Inova Health System to test application and utilization of these standards and has authored numerous papers and presentations on them.
Kathleen’s extensive experience includes service as Care Continuum Vice President for a nine-hospital system, leading acute care management and alignment for post-acute services. She earned her MSN from Rush University, BSN from DePaul University, and Women on Boards certification through the Harvard School of Public Health. Additional expertise as a registered leadership coach contributes to working with teams, improving communication, and leading strategic planning and development in the non-profit arena.
Let’s hear about Kathleen’s approach in her own words.
“We listen to client pain points and have most likely shared the same in our careers. We strive to build relationships and credibility which will then allow you to leverage the strategy/data to enhance efficiencies and control costs.”
FACILITATOR AND LEADER
My experience includes fifteen years in acute care as a staff nurse/educator before obtaining my Master’s, and subsequently extensive volunteer work as a nurse practitioner. Then I shifted into service-line leadership and hospital operations roles, including operations support to open a new 600-bed acute care hospital.
A strong interest in care management began while in hospital operations, understanding how we get paid, how we eliminate patient delays, and how we help patients successfully transition from hospital to home, or hospital to post-acute care. Additionally, value-based care became a passion, finding the best combinations of patient/provider experience, quality clinical outcomes, and reducing clinical variation. This contributed to an opportunity to develop process and outcome measures for a successful Accountable Care Organization, and the ACMA Transition of Care Standards.
I am passionate about education. I was privileged to play a role in developing ACMA’s Advanced Care Transition Simulation (ACTS) training. This is a unique program using simulation (new in care management) to validate knowledge and competency, and to improve care transitions for patients and families. The program is used in over 200 US hospitals / health care facilities.
THE ACUOCARE DIFFERENCE
I’ve been on the opposite side of the consulting table as a vice president, working with major consulting firms. We are a team of subject matter experts with knowledge and experience regarding the changing dynamics and challenges of case management leadership.
Our key differentiator? We have sat in your seat. We know how it all works. We know your challenges.
As a facilitator and collaborator, I ask people to share their success stories, as well as their pain points and to identify opportunities in every aspect of the business. We’re not just looking for cost cutting opportunities, we’re looking to drive efficiencies, top of license activity and economies of scale, without impacting quality patient care.
We see ourselves as collaborators. The ACUOCARE team collaborates with hospital leaders and staff to identify the best path forward. We listen to client pain points and have most likely shared the same in our careers. We strive to build relationships and credibility which will then allow you to leverage the strategy/data to enhance efficiencies and control costs.
CARE IN A POST-COVID WORLD
In the post-COVID healthcare world, many of the challenges our clients face involve turnover and cost of labor. However, pursuing the goal of reducing labor costs without a full understanding of the impact can create more problems. You may save on staffing by cutting ten FTE positions but then pay millions of dollars in readmission penalties due to those cuts. You have not saved money, and may instead have had a detrimental impact on patient and organizational outcomes.
We look at the full impact, bringing deep subject matter expertise to the table. At a major University hospital system we worked with, we were successful in recommendations to add FTEs, based on an assessment of social drivers of health dynamics impacting care transitions, working to the top of license, and process optimization.
THE ACUOCARE IMPACT
That is ACUOCARE's advantage. We are not only focused on cutting costs. Rather, we seek the best combination of cutting and controlling costs and improving efficiencies, all without negatively impacting patient care or alignment with standards and regulations. ACUOCARE produces results, minimizes your risk, and keeps your stakeholders engaged.