August 6th marks six months since I joined URAC. To some of you that may seem like I just showed up a week ago and others may believe I have been here ten years, but the calendar does not lie. There have been many changes since I joined the team and we are not done yet.
For my part, I hope that you have seen improved transparency, greater employee involvement in decisions, and a push for faster and simpler accreditation and decision-making. One of my first changes was to ask our product development and communications team to send out “trial balloons” for new ideas and test for market interest before we spend a lot of time crafting detailed standards. I like to think of this as “Learning Fast” as opposed to “Failing Fast.” This process will permit us to try many more ideas than we could before to find those that have the greatest opportunity.
We are working to improve our internal communications and increase collaboration across our organization whenever possible. The leadership team just returned from our second board meeting of the year and the entire board is supportive of our work and engaged with sharing ideas and opening doors for us to other organizations.
The board is enthusiastic about our new government programs and thrilled about the early sales we are seeing with some of our programs. They were supportive of our greater advocacy and policy engagement both at the national and state levels and understand that promoting our work and how it contributes to better care and value are keys to gaining meaningful name recognition both publicly and in the market.
I hope that all this work and change has begun to make URAC a better place and cleared some of the challenges to achieving our overall mission “to improve the quality of healthcare through leadership, accreditation, measurement, and innovation.”
For your part, if you have any feedback on things I/we can be doing better, or some encouragement for changes you see, my door is open and you probably have seen me walk by most desks each week, so let me know. If you have product ideas or just questions, let me hear those, too. For those not in the DC office, drop me an email or call my cell (281-750-5078). I am getting used to a new phone, so leave me a message if I don’t pick up – I may just be fumbling with answering your call on my new device and I will get back to you.
I think that URAC has a unique opportunity to shape healthcare during this time of tremendous change and I am glad I joined your team.
