Senior Care Academy
Senior Care Academy is a podcast dedicated to providing valuable information and expert advice on navigating the world of senior care for both senior care providers, and families with aging parents. Hosted by industry professionals, each episode covers a wide range of topics including healthcare options, legal considerations, financial planning, and emotional support for caregivers. If you are a healthcare provider, have aging parents, or are a senior adult, this podcast is for you! Tune in to gain valuable insights and resources to help you make informed decisions and provide the best care for your loved ones.
Senior Care Academy
Transforming Healthcare Through Leadership: Rochelle Alonzo’s Journey in Hospice Care
Ever wondered how servant leadership can transform healthcare? Join us for an inspiring conversation with Rochelle Alonzo, Area Vice President at Elevation Hospice, Primary, and Palliative Care of Utah, as she walks us through her remarkable 17-year journey in healthcare. From her beginnings as a licensed practical nurse to her current leadership role, Rochelle shares her passion for home-based hospice care and how her upbringing in a single-parent household shaped her leadership style. Hear about her day-to-day responsibilities and her commitment to excellent patient outcomes, offering invaluable lessons for healthcare professionals at any stage of their careers.
Looking to build strong, cohesive teams in healthcare? Rochelle reveals the strategies that have empowered her teams at Elevation Hospice, focusing on education, effective communication, and creating "bench strength" within departments. Discover the power of individualized training, regular assessments, and hands-on support as Rochelle shares a detailed example of how these methods significantly improved clinical outcomes and patient satisfaction. This episode underscores the importance of preparing team members to step into leadership roles, ensuring that everyone is equipped to provide compassionate, quality care.
Financial challenges in hospice care can be daunting, but Rochelle’s journey in understanding healthcare finance adds a unique dimension to her leadership. Learn how she navigates the complexities of healthcare funding and referral coordination, collaborating with local agencies to provide essential care. Rochelle’s ability to balance financial acumen with her nursing roots offers a blueprint for effective, compassionate leadership. Her stories of embracing finance, business development, and valuing her team members highlight the profound impact of compassionate leadership, making this episode a must-listen for anyone in the healthcare industry.
Hi everybody, welcome to the Senior Care Academy podcast, a podcast focused on innovation, insights and powerful stories from senior care leaders, executives, you name it. Today, we're going to be joined by Rochelle Alonzo. Rochelle is a highly effective healthcare operations executive with over 17 years of experience. Operations executive With over 17 years of experience.
Speaker 1:Rochelle is currently the area vice president at Elevation Hospice, Primary and Palliative Care of Utah, where she leverages her extensive skills in strategic planning, operations management and business analysis. With a proven track record of driving growth and creating meaningful relationships in the healthcare sector, rochelle's leadership has been pivotal in enhancing service delivery and improving patient outcomes. Rochelle, we are so excited to have you on today. Thanks for being on the show.
Speaker 2:Thank you so much, Alex. I'm so excited to be here.
Speaker 1:Yeah, let's dive into a little bit about who you are. Can you tell us about where you started, where, all throughout high school, I knew health care was definitely a space?
Speaker 2:I wanted to go into. And so I became a licensed vocational nurse or, here in Utah, a licensed practical nurse when I was 21. And then I went back to school and obtained my associate's degree to become a registered nurse, and then I just kind of kept going back. I went back and got my bachelor's in nursing and then my master's in nursing and then, most recently, my MBA. And so when I originally started in the nursing sector of healthcare, I was working with pediatric patients, and so once I relocated to Salt Lake City about 10 years ago, I kind of went to the opposite end of the spectrum and fell in love with home-based care, specifically hospice.
Speaker 2:Initially it was a little scary for me. I wasn't quite sure how to navigate end-of-life care, but it was something that I just quickly fell in love with. I saw the beauty of it and I was able to really kind of be that compassion, that compassionate person you know, for those families at the end of life, and it was just very meaningful to me to do that work. And so as my career progressed, I thought I'm one individual right with these beliefs. How do I take that belief and influence a team of individuals? And so that led me really into the leadership space which I have enjoyed so, so much. It's so amazing to see those efforts in your employees take root and see them provide compassionate, quality care to those families at the end of life. The families and the patients are just so, always so grateful for that and it's amazing to kind of see that and be able to touch even more lives over the course of my career.
Speaker 1:Thank you. That's very detailed, very extensive. What kind of inspired that shift from being an individual to wanting to be in leadership? What was that change for you? That's cool that you have like such a big focus on that change for you. That's cool that you have like such a big focus on impacting others. I think that's a unique way to describe it. I've heard other people say that they're just compassionate, that they have a lot of empathy, or maybe that they're skilled one-on-one. What would you say has been like a big factor in that desire of yours to make an impact, to really change people? Is it a role model, a parent figure? What sparked that in you?
Speaker 2:Yeah, that's a good question and honestly, I don't know. You know I grew up in a single parent household. You know I grew up in a single parent household and so I always just kind of had to be a grown up, even as a kid, and, you know, help take care of siblings and, you know, make sure everyone was taken care of. And how can I best help the family?
Speaker 2:And that was always kind of my role was a helper, if you will, and so I take that, you know, I take that role into my leadership as well as a servant leader. You know, how can I, how can I help you, how can I help influence you? And so that's just, I think, an innate ability within me. I that's what you know, that's just something I've always kind of leaned to is being that helper and knowing that, regardless of any title or position, at the end of the day, like I can get down into the weeds with everyone, and even now I go out with ride alongs with the nurses and you know, if we're doing patient care and they need assistance, I jump right in. So it's just, I think, the ability to know that my role, regardless of where I'm at in my life, is always just to help others.
Speaker 1:I think that's a really down to earth position to have as a leader. It's been amazing to interview so many different leaders and almost all of them share that ideology, where they may have the 30,000 foot view but they're not sitting at 30,000 feet. Can you describe to us like what your role is now and what that looks like for you day to day?
Speaker 2:So right now my title is area vice president for elevation hospice. We also have a primary care and palliative care business line as well, and so really you know that encompasses. It's funny, I get that question a lot, well, like what do you do for work? And it's, there's no really easy way to state it.
Speaker 2:You know you can't say, well, I'm in real estate or I'm in finance, and so anytime I get asked that question I give my title and people always kind of look at me funny, like well, what does that even mean? And so really it's just, you know, at the end of the day it really touches all aspects of the business, right?
Speaker 1:So ensuring that, our patient outcomes are great, right, and so what does that mean?
Speaker 2:That means working alongside our executive director of clinical operations to make sure our clinical teams are highly educated on the care that they're providing, whether it's soft skills or, you know, technical skills, nursing skills that they're providing, being able to have conversations with families, helping families navigate all of the different things that come up at the end of life. I mean, you think about, you know, living dynamics Is the patient still able to live at home? Are we looking to place them into some type of residence, funeral arrangements? All of the things that we don't think about daily. We at work think about them daily. So making sure our clinical team is just really operating really well, delivering high quality care, meeting the patient outcomes that we're expecting to meet.
Speaker 2:Another piece of my role is helping with the business development side, right so, going out with our marketing team and figuring out how we can work collaboratively with different physicians, hospitals, assisted living facilities to help provide care to their residents or patients and be able to collaborate with them in a really reciprocal partnership. And then also from the financial aspect, right so, our our annual budget, looking at monthly P&Ls, being a good steward of our finances and really, in all things, just helping the company grow and ensuring that everything is running as it should, if you will Right, and finding areas of deficit or maybe areas of improvement, and working collaboratively with the different departments to figure out how do we go forward and improve that process, or do we create new processes and, if so, kind of spearheading those projects and creating that roadmap of how we're going to get to X you know point X or point Y to really improve the care that we're delivering improve the care that we're delivering.
Speaker 1:That's really cool. That's a really great description of what you do. You have such a broad role area director that I can totally see why people would be, I guess, a little confused. What area do you direct? Are you pointing people in the right direction? That's really really cool. I guess what I'm wondering. You've mentioned different aspects of care, whether it be like patient outcome, whether it be managing finances. What tips or tricks do you have, or what have you learned to help balance, like the demands of the operational efficiency of your company and then like with patient centered care, like what's the magic to balance that?
Speaker 2:I think you know, really the magic comes from the team. Right, I'm one individual, but really creating that bench strength across the departments so knowing that I can lean on our clinical coordinator or our executive director of clinical operations and help them create a strategic plan on education or improving our clinical outcomes, and then really just kind of monitoring that progress and adjusting if needing right. There's always times where we have to pivot and take a different stance. But really creating strong teams, I think, is an area that I excel in. And in order to have a really strong operating company, regardless of the sector that you're in, whether it's healthcare or any other one you have to have that bench strength. You have to have people that can do essentially, can do your job and are ready to step up and take your job anytime there's a change.
Speaker 2:And really creating those team members who are accountable to their work, who have clear expectations of what their role is and you know you have that trust in them that they're going to get it done, because at the end of the day, it can't all fall to one person. So, working closely and my big thing is always education, right, I always tend to go there first and I think most people do. We don't ever think that employees don't do things the right way or a certain way because they just don't want to. It's typically because they didn't know they needed to or it was supposed to be done a certain way or could be done a certain way. So really just educating, I think, your teams on what your expectations are from the get-go and helping create a really solid path for them if there are any personal deficits within their role, and helping them be successful rather than being punitive right. So really giving them the tools for them to take and embrace and apply it to their practice and hopefully, you know, we see the the positive outcomes on the other end.
Speaker 1:Can you take me through a problem that you and your team have recently worked on that had like a positive outcomes? I'd love to. I'd love to kind of understand what you've described as you mentioned delegation. You brought up, working close together, effective communication, great criticism. Can you work us through a problem that came across your desk and what your team did to solve it?
Speaker 2:Yeah, absolutely. So I started with Elevation at the end of January of this year and when I first stepped into the role I immediately noticed there was a lot of education to do. On our clinical side. We had a lot of new nurses, they had some recent turnover in nurses, just a team that was a little bit not quite cohesive. There were a lot of communication errors or miscommunication, lack of communication and in the hospice sector, same with home health.
Speaker 2:We are all meaning the field staff. They're all out individually. So it's not like you're in a hospital setting where you have maybe six nurses on one unit. Every nurse, every chaplain, every social worker, every CNA is out there doing their own thing, so to speak. So they're kind of like the lone ranger. So if you're not communicating regularly with your team, it's very easy to maybe forget to update each other on a patient status or changes or if there's family dynamics going on. So it's definitely an area where you have to be on top of your communication, because you're not just in one clinic together where you can easily just see each other and oh yeah, let me update you on patient in room two.
Speaker 2:So when I first came in, that was definitely lacking, along with just some basic, you know, hospice kind of care training I think the team was needing. So I immediately identified that and really the way I identified that was just you know kind of what you know, looking at the skill set of the RNs, kind of doing a one-on-one with each of them and asking them what areas do you feel like you need additional training in or what areas do you feel really solid in. So doing a learning needs assessment was a great discovery tool for us to figure out how do we individualize this training right for us to figure out how do we individualize this training right, because some nurses are more advanced than others. Some know a great deal of this topic but not a great deal of that topic, and so really making it individualistic to where it was worth their time, if you will, right, if you bring everyone in for a group training that you know only one person really needs it, then the other nine might be checked out. So we initially just did that assessment piece and then I delegated the actual educational components out to one of our quality assurance managers as well as our executive director, and gave them every week the topics that we needed to discuss, help develop, you know, any curriculum that was needed. Luckily, our education department was great in that regard as well and then delivered that, you know, to the team and checked in afterwards with them to make sure they were then taking what they had learned in that training and putting it into practice.
Speaker 2:So our executive director, as well as myself, went out on ride alongs with the nurses to kind of assess and evaluate the teaching that we had done. How did that work Right? And essentially we were communicating with them what's your style of learning? And really trying to bring different learning styles into the trainings that we were doing, whether it was verbal, written games, we brought a lot of different type of strategies in. And so, you know, keeping that project on task for about two months with, you know, pretty regular educations, pretty regular ride-alongs, tweaking things and then giving feedback to the nurses on those one-on-one meetings of this is where you were, this is what we did, this is where you are now and you're rocking it or we still have some areas for improvement.
Speaker 2:And you know, I'm happy to say, our quality scores, our patient satisfaction scores, just increased tremendously. We were getting so many kudos in the facilities that we were taking care of patients in and that was really nice to hear, because then I started going along with the marketing team doing kind of the same thing and when I would go into these different assisted living facilities or you know, skilled nursing facilities, it was really nice to hear oh, your nurse Aubrey does a great job. Or you know, your chaplain Matt is amazing. And so just hearing that feedback, you know, was definitely the cherry on top of okay, we got it. We know what we're doing now. We invested a lot of time and education into this team and they took it, you know, took it on and just really embraced it.
Speaker 1:Um, I love the solutions you guys came up with. Um, do you like, how did how did those solutions come about for you? Do you kind of, is it just the spur of the moment ideas? Does it take a lot of planning, a lot of creative brainstorming? What kind of fuels your guys' decisions when you deal with the problem?
Speaker 2:Yeah, I think for me it's just been trial and error over the years.
Speaker 2:I've been doing this for a number of years now and so, knowing maybe historically, what tricks I have in my bag that I know have worked before, and you bring them and you tweak them to the current audience or to the current situation and sometimes maybe what's worked before in a different market doesn't work now.
Speaker 2:And so then just really getting the.
Speaker 2:You know, the biggest thing I can say to any leader, especially if you're a new leader whether that means you're brand new to leadership or you're taking on a leadership role in a new company or organization is the first 30 days really of your tenure in that position really should just be spent kind of listening and seeking understanding.
Speaker 2:You know, tell me why you guys have been doing things a certain way, and then that will really help you figure out the root cause and then start planning how do we now fix these areas of opportunity, so really seeking to understand, rather than coming in and just pulling everything out of that bag of tricks and saying we're going to do all of these things. It may not fit for this team, or maybe you know what you think is the problem. Really isn't the problem. So getting to the root cause is definitely at the center, I think, of any type of improvement plan, and that comes with meeting with your team you know one-on-one or a group and really just hearing them out and getting an understanding, and that also gets the buy-in of them right.
Speaker 1:They realize that this is someone who's coming in and asking us what we think and what we think you know is going on, rather than just dictating from the beginning to see tried, true, tested methods for solving problems is definitely a big part of what you guys do to help cultivate a better environment for your clients and your employees, your staff, anyone involved in your operation. I think that's really amazing what you guys are doing. I kind of want to highlight current issues or maybe like how you guys go about different things or topics that I've seen in other companies. Can you like discuss how you guys navigate the somewhat challenging environment of healthcare funding and reimbursement Like what does that look like for you guys?
Speaker 2:Yeah, absolutely. You know, with us being in the hospice space, most of our patients do have Medicare or Medicaid, which we all know are, you know, government regulated. So that requires a lot of paperwork, if you will, and just really a lot of criteria that we need to make sure our patients are meeting in terms of eligibility and decline things that would make them appropriate for hospice. With that, we also work with private payers and, you know, what can be really difficult is if you have a patient that's in need and we see it pretty frequently here in our Metroplex. You have a patient that's in need, and we see it pretty frequently here in our Metroplex. You have a patient that's in need but they have no funding source, right, maybe they've been homeless, or maybe they just recently moved here from another state and they had funding in that state, but they don't quite in Utah.
Speaker 2:Those patients unfortunately kind of fall through the cracks a little bit of the healthcare system system, right?
Speaker 2:So they're that vulnerable population and so for us, just really trying to stay on top of any research we can, how can we, you know, work with our, our local agencies to try to get this patient, you know, fast tracked for Medicaid, or you know how do we also collaborate and coordinate with other organizations within the area to see.
Speaker 2:You know, is there a service that they can provide to this patient that maybe we can't, because of some type of funding issue, to really give them as many resources as we can? Even if we're not able to take care of them, we try to give them additional resources to help get them the care that they need. But really the biggest thing is just for us anyways, just really staying on top of any type of changes within the revenue system, the reimbursement system for Medicare, medicaid, you know any changes that they might be implementing and then working closely with commercial payers to really have them try to understand the benefit of hospice care and that for them it's a cost reduction, most likely because those patients are now just going to be cared for in their home rather than bouncing back to the hospital so frequently.
Speaker 1:Do you guys do any type of like referrals or do you collaborate with other agencies to provide care, Because some people fall through the cracks Like what do you? What does that relationship look like?
Speaker 2:Yeah, absolutely so. We work really closely, especially with personal care agencies. We work, we refer a lot of patients to personal care agencies if they're needing additional caregivers in the home for maybe custodial cares that don't fall necessarily under the hospice benefit. We also refer hospice patients over to home health if there's a need. So maybe a patient has improved drastically and they're now graduating off of hospice, which is wonderful, but maybe they are really deconditioned and you know they've had a recent fall and they're needing some physical therapy or something right. We'll work with home health agencies as well to get them set up.
Speaker 2:We also work closely with different living facilities If patients are needing additional care. Maybe they're no longer able to live independently in their own home and they need to go to an assisted living facility or a memory care unit or a long-term care facility. You know we'll work closely with all of those different entities to just make sure we're getting the patient set up for success. In whatever regards that may look like to the patient and it really varies individual to individual on what's needed but our medical social workers really work closely with the patients, with their families, and are able to make outside referrals to any type of community resources. We also refer patients over to Meals on Wheels if maybe there's a limited food supply. Just any type of resources that they might need, we try to connect them with.
Speaker 1:Like after your referral is sent? Do you guys have any way to continue communication with that person if they ever needed your services again?
Speaker 2:Absolutely so. Once we send the referral over, we make sure that the said referral is processed right. We don't just say we're sending your paperwork over to XYZ company, hopefully they call you. We continue to follow up to make sure that all of that is taken care of. Once they do, we're no longer involved in their care. So we do take a step back, but we always leave, you know, our contact information with the patient, with the family, and just say if there's any any type of change in your, in your need, if you start having any more recent decline or falls or anything at all, always give us a call back and we can send a nurse out to evaluate and just see if it's appropriate for you to come on to hospice services.
Speaker 1:How long would you say it took you to really find your groove in the, in the role that you have now?
Speaker 2:Yeah, that's a. That's a really good question, I would say. You know, I I started out in the more clinical side of operations and then I moved into more of the business side of operations and now I'm in a place where I'm really kind of meshing all of it together. Um, and so I would say it took me a solid, you know, four or five years to really understand everything. And I shouldn't say everything, because there'll be times where I'll still be in a meeting and someone will use an acronym.
Speaker 2:I'm like, oh, I haven't heard that one before, and so let me go, you know, search that really quickly on Google, and then I realized, okay, it's this, I know it by a different name or you know a different acronym. But I think you know you're always learning, right, because things are always changing and evolving. And I think the minute we feel like we're we've mastered something, reality kind of slaps us upside the head and says, just kidding, here's something else for you to figure out. And so for me, I've been a lifelong learner and I continue to just find things that I maybe didn't know before or I haven't had much chance to really dive deep into and take those on as projects, and I do recognize that it helps like a lot with the bigger picture items.
Speaker 1:What would you say is something that you're learning to love. That, you know, maybe was tough to enjoy at first, but now, as you've gotten used to it, or maybe as you learned about it, it's been easier and easier.
Speaker 2:I would say for me, it's definitely the finance side. When I first started in hospice care, I was a nurse, right. I was say for me, it's definitely the finance side. When I first started in hospice care, I was a nurse, right, I was going to bedside, I was taking care of patients. I didn't care about the money or the cost of things, it was just all about the patient. And it all still is, and you can still provide really great quality of care and have a good understanding of the business sense of the finances and where you're at, and once I became more exposed to that and really recognizing you know different ways to manage and be good stewards of that.
Speaker 2:It's my favorite thing now. I would say I love I geek out over, you know budgets and forecasts and you know every month scrubbing my financials and just seeing you know where we made improvement or areas for improvement, and so it's definitely a passion of mine now. And as I went through my MBA, I love the finance classes that I took, and so I never thought I would say that especially. You know, starting out my career as a nurse, I never thought I would be thinking I'd love to look at spreadsheets all day long, but I realized that I'm a very data-driven leader and so you know I'm like I hear this, but let me go find the data to back it up, and so I just love diving into all things financial. It's definitely kind of my jam, whereas I never thought it would be.
Speaker 1:How would you address someone who struggles with that?
Speaker 2:Yeah, I would say, at least for me. You know, my the reason I struggled with it initially was I didn't have an understanding of it. I didn't understand the impact of it. I didn't understand. I remember the first time I ever looked at a P&L. I had been in the leadership world for all of about two years maybe, and a P&L was sent to me and here's your monthly performance or here's your monthly financials. Take a look at them and see where you guys need to create a plan for improvement. I had no idea how to look at them.
Speaker 2:It was a 200, 300 line spreadsheet with all these numbers, and so I would say, really just diving into it, asking questions, and don't be afraid to ask questions, especially, you know, if you have a finance team or something like that or a controller who can kind of answer those questions.
Speaker 2:But learn it. And I think once you learn it and you start implementing certain processes and you see those numbers move in a positive direction, it becomes a little bit like a dopamine rush. It's like, oh, you know, we've been really, you know, working with our nurses on making sure we're providing a certain number of supplies and that we're not having waste and all of these things and you know we see that because our supply costs, you know, were in line with budget or things like that and so it just really becomes for me anyway, it really becomes kind of a fun thing. You know, as you're implementing a lot of different processes, improvements and becoming good stewards of your money and understanding it, you can start seeing where you're saving some money or reutilizing that money in different areas. Maybe that goes into your marketing fund or your staff incentive and appreciation fund. So it's really all about learning at first.
Speaker 1:I think what you said is really, really inspiring. Just always being a student of the game and learning and continuing learning makes you an effective person. I would add teaching someone also makes you very good at learning, because one of my favorite quotes is if you can't teach it to a four-year-old, then you don't know it that well. I say that to myself all the time. Before I decide to embark on explaining on how something works, I think to myself okay, like would I be able to explain this to a five-year-old or a kindergartner? And if the answer is no, then I Google it and I just send someone the link. So I really like what you said about learning. I think that's really really fascinating. What would you say is like a big thing you're learning now. I mean, you learn to love finance and you're learning big things on your job. What's something within the last you know, maybe quarter or two, that you're really sinking your teeth into?
Speaker 2:a department that I've collaborated closely with obviously worked closely with, but wasn't in into it knee deep, but have been recently is really on the business development side, right. So I've been. We have a few new liaisons to our team and so really working with them to help get them trained up and running, looking at their accounts that they are calling on, helping them, you know, set up schedules for that, helping them attend strategic meetings and pitching, you know, our business to them and the follow-up, creating orientations to plans for them, all of the things that I knew. All happened, you know, and I was like, okay, yeah, I'm involved in that. Great, that's great. Now I'm like helping really that team kind of get their feet under them so they can start, you know, being a lot more effective, since they're all pretty new in their role, and so that's something that I'm, you know, knee deep in as well. And so, again, I think for me it's another area that I just have realized how much I enjoy it. I was out today earlier with one of our marketers and we went to a few different places and met with some individuals and one I love.
Speaker 2:The nursing side, well, the nursing side of me loves it because we go into these buildings and I see all of these residents and I'm talking to them and how are you?
Speaker 2:And it just it brings that back that you know bedside care for me a little bit.
Speaker 2:But then also you know meeting with the administrative teams at these places and really discussing what are their needs, what do their residents need, what do their staff members need, what do they look like or look for when they're collaborating with the hospice company and then really being able to speak on how we've perfected those processes with our clinical team.
Speaker 2:Right, we put a lot of investment into our clinical team when I first came in and for me that was really important because it's really hard to grow a business if you don't have a really solid team that you're quote, unquote, selling. And so whenever we go in and we meet with these administrators and they're saying, well, I need nurses to respond to me, you know timely, I need your plans of care, I need your orders, and I'm like we've got all of that down pat and it's a pretty seamless, smooth transition and you know, being able to speak to that is really exciting and fun. It's a different side. I've always been a lot, a lot more operations minded, clinical mindedminded, but now taking on a lot of collaborative pieces with our director of business development and helping her help her team right has been really exciting and fun and definitely something new for me.
Speaker 1:I never really think about the process that companies like yours hospice companies, palliative care companies, home health companies go through in order to establish those connections with other people who are caring for older adults. I never thought about that. I never thought about you know, coming to a meeting prepped with a plan of how you're going to provide care, prepped with your numbers. To me it always just seemed like, hey, you're going to meet together, you might have a quick chat about what you do, and from there they're going to make a choice. So that's also new to me, being able to understand like that aspect.
Speaker 1:I liked what you said earlier too about you know you're now the person who's doing orientations, you're now the person who's doing onboarding, or you know first couple visits, follow-ups, or at least you're conducting that, and for a lot of us in the healthcare space at least, like more on the staffing end, you just kind of assume that those things happen. You didn't really think about the operation behind it. I think that's really cool to think about. I'm grateful that you brought that up. You've made quite an impact on people with your career and I'm sure that you have a lot more in the tank to offer. What type of legacy do you hope to leave through your work in healthcare?
Speaker 2:I love that question. I don't think that's a question that I've ever really been asked before and, you know, I hope that I can leave behind a legacy of a leader who was fair, supportive, right, someone who always kind of had your back, so to speak, works closely with all of the team members and really impacted the quality of care that we provide to families and patients at the end of life. I mean, I always tell my team in hospice we don't get a do-over right, this is our one shot and we're helping these patients until they pass most likely. And so how do we take that, and take that with sincerity and know that every time we walk into a patient's home, a new patient's home, it may be our 1,000 patients that we've cared for in our nursing career but for them it's most likely the first time they've ever dealt with hospice care and so really stepping into their shoes.
Speaker 2:So I want to, you know, I hope to be known as a compassionate leader and also just someone who was very passionate about end of life care and making sure we're taking care of patients and families with dignity, respect and compassion.
Speaker 1:I love that. I think that's a really good place to kind of wrap it up. I kind of want to summarize some of the big points that you brought up today. You brought up your team a lot. You really rely on your team.
Speaker 1:I think being able to speak about them in such an eloquent way as you did speaks volumes about the type of individual that you look for. I'm sure your team and the people you work with they're operational minded, they're compassionate, they're understanding, they're learning driven. I think to be able to talk about those things at the depth that you have shows that that's what you're surrounded with. I mean, you're a product of your environment to a degree and I loved your focus on the individual and your focus on whether it be, you know, a nurse, whether it be someone their last two weeks of life. I think your focus brings a lot of success that I've seen at Elevation and it's a cause that I support. I think that's wonderful. Today's been wonderful everybody. This is Rochelle Alonzo, a leader extraordinaire, compassionate and strong at Elevation Hospice. Rochelle, thank you so much for being on the show today.
Speaker 2:Thank you, alex, I appreciate it.