In this episode of the Healthcare Plus Podcast, Dan Collard welcomes Céu Cirne-Neves, MPA, FACHE. With over 25 years’ experience as a healthcare executive, she now serves as a faculty member in the undergraduate and graduate health administration programs at Rutgers University.

They discuss insights Céu has gained from her unusual path, which led her from her first job in healthcare marketing to chief administrative officer and finally to academia. At Rutgers she’s observed major differences in today’s students vs. those of years past (for instance: they’re far more focused and specific on what they want, and very intentional about gaining the competencies and resources needed to achieve it).

Céu shares her recent idea for drawing undecided students into the Healthcare Administration major by building an exploratory course based on Quint Studer’s book The Calling: Why Healthcare is So Special. (“I feel healthcare is more than a job,” she says. “I’m trying to make it enticing for them to see the difference they can make through healthcare administration.”)

Filled with practical takeaways, this episode will appeal to anyone seeking more understanding on what drives the next generation of Health Administration students, how to help them connect to their calling early, and how to develop and mentor them.

About Céu Cirne-Neves, MPA, FACHE

Céu Cirne-Neves, MPA, FACHE, is a healthcare executive with more than 25 years of experience in senior level positions and has made a successful leadership transition as full-time faculty at the Rutgers University EJ Bloustein School of Planning and Public Policy. At Bloustein, she teaches in the Master of Health Administration Program and serves as the coordinator for the undergraduate Health Administration Program. Furthermore, she is the faculty advisor for the undergraduate student organization, Future Healthcare Administrators, which signature event is the annual healthcare administration case competition.

Cirne-Neves brings to the classroom a wealth of practical health administration experience resulting from years leading culture change, operational effectiveness, and patient safety and experience. She served as the CEO of Saint James Hospital, Cathedral Healthcare System, Newark, for 10 years, and most recently, in a variety of senior level roles including as Vice President of Ambulatory Services at Cooperman Barnabas Medical Center (CBMC), RWJBarnabas Health, Livingston.

Throughout her career, Cirne-Neves has demonstrated how to convert an organization’s Mission, Vision, and Values into a leadership model that improves workforce engagement, organizational performance and results. She excels at strategic planning and implementation, operations management, and community benefit; and most of all, she shares the resolve that health administrators must nurture and contribute to the next generation of healthcare leaders.

Cirne-Neves is board certified in hospital administration and as a fellow of the American College of Healthcare Executives (ACHE); she is a past president of ACHE’s New Jersey chapter and serves as the ACHE Regent for New Jersey – Northern; as part of her annual Regent Awards Program, she has now introduced the Student Associate and Mid Careerist Regent Awards, elevating the significance of both levels of health administration. She has served on the Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award Board of Examiners and under her leadership CBMC received the regional Baldrige Gold Award for Performance Excellence.

She has enjoyed serving in the most senior roles at healthcare organizations and now promotes bridging healthcare organizations with healthcare education.

In this episode of the Healthcare Plus Podcast, Dan Collard talks to Annamarí Dietrichson, BSc, MHA, an executive health coach and keynote speaker renowned for her expertise in avoiding burnout, creating a thriving culture, and cultivating leadership essentials. She also oversees patient experience for the Continental Division of HCA Healthcare.

While leadership can be an exhilarating path, it can also wear people down when they don’t know how to manage it. Still, Annamarí says it’s possible for leaders (and everyone) to thrive in healthcare, regardless of its pressures. It’s about being the boss of our brain: Thoughts that might not even be true create an emotion in our body that ends up driving stress or success. That emotion drives us to act in ways that can either get us the results we want…or not.

After deeply researching burnout, she formulated a methodology to tackle it. Called THRIVE—an acronym for Targeted Thoughts, Healthy Habits, Rest and Resilience, Intentionality, Vigilance, and Empowered Energy—it’s a framework for creating the mindset and skillset to be solution-oriented, keep your thoughts from hijacking you, and build a thriving career.

Annamarí says fighting burnout is both personal and a corporate responsibility. She wants every leader and every individual in healthcare to work on their personal well-being as if nobody else is going to help. At the same time, she wants corporations to fight burnout as if no individual is going to do it themselves. If both groups put in 100 percent, that 200 percent effort might help us finally win this thing—for ourselves and, ultimately, for our patients.

About Annamarí Dietrichson

Annamarí Dietrichson, BSc, MHA, is a seasoned healthcare executive, executive health coach, and keynote speaker renowned for her expertise in avoiding burnout, creating a thriving culture, and cultivating leadership essentials. As the founder of Annamari Health & Leadership Coach, LLC, she empowers healthcare leaders and organizations to unlock their full potential and THRIVE.

Annamarí serves as the division vice president of care experience for the Continental Division of HCA Healthcare. She completed her graduate studies at the University of Stellenbosch, South Africa, where she graduated with a bachelor of science degree in 2001. In 2018 she received her master’s in health administration from Louisiana State University. Annamarí is a South Africa native who is proud to be a naturalized U.S. citizen since November 2022. When she is not at work or coaching her clients, you can find her somewhere in the mountains adventuring with her husband and their two cattle dogs.

In this episode of the Healthcare Plus Podcast, Quint Studer welcomes Regina Shupe, DNP, RN, and Jennifer Carron Passon, MSOM, CPXP, for a conversation focused on patient experience.

Quint, Regina, and Jennifer explore the “patient experience” concept, which has evolved tremendously over the past few decades. Now it encompasses the sum of all interactions from the initial touchpoint when a patient even considers selecting a healthcare organization until the time that they are back home caring for themselves and maintaining a healthy lifestyle. (It’s interesting to hear Quint, who has been described as putting patient experience “on the map,” open the discussion with his own history lesson on the field.)

They also discuss a 2021 JAMA article—“Criterion-Based Measurements of Patient Experience in Health Care: Eliminating Winners and Losers to Create a New Moral Ethos” by Thom Mayer, Arjun Venkatesh, and Donald M. Berwick—debating the pros and cons of moving away from traditional percentile-based evaluations.

Finally, they offer a wealth of takeaways. Listeners will learn from the thoughtful discussion of common barriers people face when working to improve the patient experience and some practical (and doable) tips for overcoming them.

About Jennifer Carron Passon, MSOM, CPXP

With 30 years of leadership experience and a Certified Patient Experience Professional (CPXP) credential, Jennifer is a patient experience officer at BJC Health System, a $6B integrated academic health system that serves millions of patients and families across the Midwest.

Her mission is to ignite a passion for human centricity and to transform the healthcare experience for all. She uses her Disney Institute training and contemporary thinking to design and deploy innovative interventions and digitally enhanced programs that elevate service excellence, hospitality, ownership, and regulatory results. She also contributes to various state-level and global initiatives that aim to advance patient and family engagement, equity and inclusion, and quality and safety in healthcare delivery.

About Regina Shupe, DNP, RN

Regina works for the Healthcare Plus Solutions Group® team as an advisor, bringing her expertise in emergency services to help our partners assess and improve upon their patient experience and throughput to better serve patients and communities. She holds a Doctor of Nursing Practice degree and also holds a certification in LEAN for Healthcare.

For the past 35 years, she has dedicated her life to caring for patients, families, team members, and physicians. As a nurse, she enjoyed the intersection between the heart and science, healing patients from the inside out. As a leader, she is able to see the positive correlation between the experience of team members and the experience of patients. She believes when we intentionally design meaningful and memorable experiences for team members, physicians, and patients, we are able to heal as well as truly transform healthcare.