Pulsara Blog

For some people and organizations, the process of making a decision can be a very challenging thing. If your facility is like the hospital I used to work in as a STEMI coordinator, you talk about the decision at hand in your committees, you have meetings before the “big” meeting, and then you have still more meetings after.

EDITOR'S NOTE: Special thanks to Cynthia Bradford Lencioni for writing today's blog post. You can connect with her on LinkedIn. 

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Nothing is particularly hard if you divide it into small jobs. --- Henry Ford

No matter who you are, what your personality type is, or what kind of work you do, from time to time it is inevitable that you will say to yourself:

“How on earth am I going to ever accomplish this?”

“Where do I begin?”

“There’s no way!...”

I can sure relate to these expressions in my life experiences. As a student athlete in college, those 18-hour days that started with a 5am morning workout and ended doing calculus problems into the evening were daunting. I eventually learned not to focus on the GPA I had to reach to maintain my scholarship, but rather on doing well on the exams, projects, and papers along the way each semester.

In my role at Pulsara, I travel the country meeting with coordinators and administrators of EMS agencies and hospitals. In my travels, I've noticed that the majority of organizations can be grouped into one of two distinct categories based on their overarching attitudes and self-perceptions.

On the surface, both attitudes look the same, and both tell themselves and others “We are the best.” The distinction, though, lies in a fundamental difference in belief. The organizations in the first category believe they are “the best” as a result of pride, whereas the second camp holds this belief with humility. Allow me to elaborate:

2015 has been an amazing year for Pulsara. We grew our incredible team, gained some amazing clients, helped several facilities finally acheive their desired D2N and D2B times, and pushed out some truly revolutionary features on our platform - all in the name of improving patient outcomes for time sensitive emergencies. 

To celebrate a successful year, we thought we'd reflect on Pulsara's 5 most popular blog posts from 2015. Some were funny, others serious, but all were educational. Take a look for yourself!

What does Thanksgiving mean to you? Hopefully, it means gathering with loved ones over hot, delicious food and reflecting on how blessed each and every one of us truly is. We at Pulsara are an incredibly thankful bunch! Thankful for the opportunity to work in such a beautiful setting as Montana, thankful to be so excited about the work we're doing that we often have to be coaxed by family and friends to stop working for a few hours, and thankful that we have such incredible, dedicated clients who are making massively tangible differences in the lives of STEMI and stroke patients. We are honored to serve you. Here, summarized in a word cloud, are the things we as a team are most thankful for:

But Thanksgiving isn't the only time of year we reflect on our blessings. In fact, several Pulsarians make it a part of their daily routines to either think about or write down at least three things they are thankful for. It can be little things like a visit to the Pulsara office from the building owner's doggy, the taste of an especially sweet tangerine, snow tires on icy roads, or spotting a bird building a nest.

EDITOR'S NOTE: Special thanks to Tia Smith for writing today's blog post. You can connect with her on LinkedIn. 

The widespread adoption of the term “disruption” to describe any force that shakes up an industry has created a particular kind of faux pas in the business world, where business leaders often default to using it for a much wider spread of changes than the technical definition actually implies.

Let’s take a closer look at why disruption is misused to describe a cascade of events, rather than its intended use: to describe the technical strategy behind a company’s actions.

Think back: can you remember the first time you were introduced to an executive in a company that you’ve worked for? I remember this experience at one of the hospitals where I worked and the prep for the meeting ended up being more awkward than the meeting itself. My boss gave me an impossibly long list of pointers and tips about what to say and not say …  it was exhausting!

It was very obvious that this executive had been placed on a pedestal, and as a result, I couldn't help but see him as separate and distant from the rest of the team. It turns out I wasn’t the only one.

For many of us, this is the image we’ve grown accustomed to when we think of leadership. We spend a great portion of our lives trying to get up on that pedestal ourselves, not so that we can make a genuine difference, but rather just so that we can say “Look at me! Yo Tucker, I did it!”

EDITOR'S NOTE: Special thanks to Jean Morgan for writing today's blog post. You can connect with her on LinkedIn. 

Knock. Knock.  

Who’s There?

HIPAA.

HIPAA Who?

I can’t tell you that.

UGGGG. You’ve heard it before.

“Please sign this. It’s for HIPAA.”

OR

“We can’t share that information with you.” “Why not?” “Because … HIPAA!”

Truth is, most people (healthcare folks included) do not have a strong understanding of what HIPAA actually is. In fact, you’ll sometimes even see it spelled incorrectly!

Who are you?

Like … who are you REALLY? When no one is looking. When you’re by yourself. Who are you? What principles guide your decisions?

Welcome to the final, and Part 4, of our series that asks the question: “Who is Pulsara?”

EDITOR'S NOTE: Special thanks to Elisa Ramsey for writing today's blog post. You can connect with her on LinkedIn. 

Pulsara, like many startups, has a work environment that is flexible, fun, and constantly changing. That said, we also work hard to ensure that we always have our bases covered through a strong organizational backbone. As the Office Manager at Pulsara, I have to make sure I can systematically keep track of every tiny but integral detail, piece of paperwork, or signature that comes through our doors. 

At Pulsara, our Vision is our future roadmap, the answer to the question: “Where do we see ourselves in the future?”

In Part 1 of our 4-part series about who we are as a company, we definied our mission, the answer to WHAT do we do at Pulsara. We unite and empower people to improve health by simplifying care coordination.

In conjunction with our mission, our purpose statement answers HOW. How will we accomplish our mission? Or more specifically, how is Pulsara going to simplify care coordination?

We care about what we’re doing.

We care about the latest in stroke research. We care about streamlining and maximizing efficiencies in STEMI cases. We care about building Regional Systems of Care. AND, we care about people.

How does that fit into the big picture?

One of the challenges in any organization is direction. At Pulsara, it’s critically important that we focus on the right core projects at the right time with the right level of concentration. How do we accomplish that? By defining who we are.

Over this 4-part series, we’ll be reviewing our mission, our purpose, our vision and our non-negotiable set of values.

“I want it so bad that it hurts.”

You’ve been there. It’s that one thing that you wish upon ceaselessly. That one thing that begins to dominate your every thought and steers your actions. We have all experienced how effortlessly human nature can take thereins and drive us to extreme measures in such situations.

CASE IN POINT

Recently, my eight-year-old daughter REALLY wanted a pet hedgehog (yes, it’s a common request down here in Texas). For weeks, she carefully plotted. The first tactic included warming Daddy up to the idea. Then she moved on to bartering and a smattering of clever negotiation tactics.

Editor's Note: About a month ago, we published a fantastic piece that offers several tips for how leaders can better prepare their teams to implement change. Complementing that piece is the following article, which sheds light on why all humans resist change and how you as an individual can learn to embrace it rather than fear it. Special thanks to Kathy Walsh for writing today's blog post. You can connect with her on LinkedIn. 

Thomas Alva Edison is considered one of the most innovative and successful inventors. He is credited with inventing the carbon filament light bulb, the platform for modern motion picture technology, an early form of the X-ray machine, the phonograph, and more. Yet he was ultimately forced out of his own company because he was resistant to change.

How is it that some of the most creative and innovative people are THE MOST resistant to change?

It’s lonely at the top.

Yes, it was a long way from the top of the corporate ladder, but there are two things I know for sure: 1) I was in a leadership position and 2) I was VERY lonely.

But here’s a secret:

If you are in a leadership position and are alone, you’re doing it wrong.

Yup, I said it. If you are in a leadership position and are lonely, you’re missing the point.

The good news is that you’re not the only one. In fact, throughout my travels with Pulsara, I connect daily with fellow coordinators – from large and small health systems – that feel the exact same way. I get it. It’s a tough position. In fact, as a coordinator, the very essence of your job is influencing people in areas where you have no authority.

“The only people who like change are wet babies.”

-- Mark Twain

How true is that statement? If you’re looking for an enemy, just go and change something. I wish it were different, but it’s one of life’s inevitable truths. Many of us live under the false pretense that one day all things will stay the same and we’ll find ourselves sipping umbrella drinks on the beach. This is true; one day you’ll find that change is not longer relevant, but it requires that you die first.

If you're like me, you got into healthcare to fix things. Because of that, we’re wired to look critically through the lens of the broken – the broken patients, the broken system, the broken process and even the broken colleague.