IGNITE Leadership Academy LeadingAge New York 2014-15 2014-15 | Page 11

Joseph Gallagher PT, DPT
Manager of Rehab Professional Practice
Visiting Nurse Service of New York

Standardizing Information Delivery
1

How would you describe your Action Learning Project and the difference you hope it will make to
advance your organization’s mission (or the field) and benefit the individuals you serve?

My Action Learning Project is focused on creating a standardized system of communication to get information to our clinicians at a
team level. Our home care organization currently has over 2,500 clinicians in the field in the NYC area. They are divided over seven
regions and over 70 teams. There is a non-standardized system of having monthly meetings where the teams of about 30-35 nurses,
therapists and social workers come in from the field for one to two hours to get updates from their team managers. There is no
standardization to how this happens. Our staff receive different information in varied styles of delivery. I feel that for an organization
of our size, this needs to be done in a systematic way so that the teams get the information they need in a timely manner, and that the
team managers are held to certain standards.

2

How have the relationships you’ve developed as part of your project (with mentors, partners,
stakeholders, etc.) influenced this direction and you as a leader?

I am slowly getting our leadership on board to put work flow templates into place, so my persistency has definitely had an effect.

3

What have been important turning points for you, in your own learning, as you’ve engaged with the
action learning process (you might consider a surprise, insight, setback, or challenge)?

So far I have encountered a big barrier… Aversion to change. I proposed a Powerpoint template to our leadership that included all of
the components I described above. I also included in that proposal a work flow where a portion of each month’s team meeting was
put together by our leadership to get information out to staff directly from them on organization wide changes. That would require a
monthly meeting on our leadership’s part to put the slides together and then send them out to all the team managers. I have been met
with resistance because this is a change for the organization. Even some of the team managers I approached were reluctant because
they don’t know how to use Powerpoint. The idea of shifting how we organize t