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Grand River Health’s Pruett wins Summit Award, others at hospital recognized

Alex Zorn
  

GRH Registered Janice Stagg gives her patients caring and passionate care and this month she was recognized as an Exceptional Nurse at the HealthCare Service Excellence Conference.
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Summit award recipient:

Annick Pruett (Empowering Manager): Annick Pruett joined the Grand River Health Administrative Team as the Community Relations Director in 2011. Prior to her current position she served as the president and CEO of Rifle Area Chamber of Commerce. She feels her lack of prior health care experience helped her understand how to better connect with and meet the needs of the community through the their eyes.

pinnacle award recipients:

Janice Stagg (Exceptional Nurse): Janice began her career at Grand River Health over a decade ago as a certified nursing assistant. She has served as a nurse at the Grand River Health in the Inpatient unit, Emergency Department and currently the Surgery Department.

Phyllis Zilm (Service Excellence Super Coach): Phyllis Zilm started as a physical Education Major at Boise State and changed to Physical Therapy her first semester. She graduated from Pacific as a Physical Therapist in 1981. She has done all kinds of physical, including Home Health, Hospice and Outpatient Orthopedics. In 2003, she started to specialize Inpatient to Lymphedema management and Oncology Therapy. She has been a member of the Grand River team for three years.

Caryn Hettler (Program Director): Caryn Hettler began her career at Grand River working as a volunteer in the fall of 2012 and was quickly hired as a staff member in May, 2013. She works within the community relations, marketing and volunteer services departments. Hettler is serving her second year as the program director for the Service Excellence Initiative at Grand River Health.

Annick Pruett, community relations director for the Grand River Health administration team, has overseen the hospital as it worked to improve patient experience and staff engagement. This month, she and several members of the hospital staff were nationally recognized for their service.

At the Health Care Service Excellence Conference in San Antonio, the hospital’s program director Caryn Hettler, nurse Janice Stagg, and physical therapy coach Phyllis Zilm received Pinnacle Awards as qualified, innovative, and progressive individuals who have made outstanding progress towards in improving patient care and staff engagement.

Pruett received the Summit Award, the highest award given at the conference.



The Summit Awards committee received more than 265 nominations from 20 different health care organizations spanning 10 states, according to the press release. Of those, 54 were chosen as Pinnacle Achievers and 15 were presented with the Summit Award.

Pruett received the Summit Award for being an “empowering manager.”



“Our philosophy here is to find the talent among the staff,” she said. “We’ve seen marked improvement in all areas of our service excellence scores, and we think it is the direct engagement of the staff.”

This year was Grand River’s third time participating in the service excellence initiative as program director Caryn Hettler has seen significant improvements in just three years.

Registered nurse Janice Stagg, who won the Pinnacle Award for exceptional nurse and has worked at the hospital for over 10 years, said she has seen firsthand as the hospital implemented a new program in the OR to help with efficiency.

She said the hospital staff worked to get patients taken care of on time and established better methods to get patients to surgery earlier.

“It shows teamwork spearheaded by the staff,” she said. “Everybody is buying in and taking ownership of the process.”

GRH CEO Jim Coombs described her as one of the “people who stand out as informal leaders among the staff.”

Individuals, teams, or organizations had to be nominated by their peers to be eligible to receive the awards.


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