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At Good Shepherd Health 
Care System, our medical staff, 
employees and volunteers 
are dedicated to continuously 
improving the experience you 
have while in our care. Some 
experiences may be joyous – like 
the birth of a newborn baby, while 
others more traumatic – like end-
of-life care. 

Wherever you are on the 
continuum of care, we are 
dedicated to ensuring you and 
your loved ones are treated with 
respect, empathy and compassion. 
Our job is to be there for you in 
good times and bad; to laugh 
when you laugh and cry when you 
cry. As caregivers, we chose to 

dedicate our lives to serving others – 
caring for your needs when you are 
unable to care for them yourself. 

Fundamentally, we feel it is 
our responsibility and duty to 
adequately supply our team 
of caregivers with the tools 
and training necessary to meet 
and exceed your expectations 
as a healthcare patient. As an 
organization, we have embarked 
on a journey we call our Service 
Excellence Initiative (SEI). It is a 
journey of continuous improvement, 
following industry standards and 
processes in order to provide the 
best patient experience possible 
in our rural health care setting. 
This improvement is evident by 

Customer Experience

Service Summit 

GSHCS’s annual “Service Summit”, themed “Our Roots 
Run Deep”, was held November 5, 2019 and gave our 
employees a chance to exhibit their performance and 
process improvement projects in a creative format. 
Eighteen teams submitted colorful project boards, 
competing for a chance to win a catered lunch of their 
choice for their department. Each board was thoughtfully 
designed to feature projects that have made their teams 
more effective and efficient in some way. 

One of the most noteworthy projects was organized 
by our Treatment Center and Materials Management 
departments, who created a tree and branch-themed 
design showcasing their efforts to standardize and 
organize their supplies. The project was born out of 
curiosity amongst nursing staff as to why the Treatment 

the success we experienced 
in customer satisfaction in 
the 2019-2020 fiscal year. Our 
accomplishments included:

•

Completed 77 Departmental
Ongoing Improvement Tactics
(DO IT) Projects focused
on improving the customer
experience within
a department.

•

1,266 peer recognition
cards were given to fellow
employees to recognize each
other for going above and
beyond at our organization.

•

Due to COVID-19, no Service
Excellence Workshops were
able to take place.

Center had exceeded their supply budget, and evolved 
into an assessment of products, which included cost 
comparisons. As their team scrutinized basic supplies, 
they discovered that regular saline syringes costing 
$0.46 each could be replaced by 5cc ampules at $0.08 
each, reducing their saline cost by 65%. Staff was also 
able to greatly reduce their cost of gauze by comparing 
products and reducing the amount stored on the shelf. 
The team didn’t stop there. As the wound care products 
became streamlined on the unit, the two departments 
worked together to revise the order and delivery process, 
develop a color-coding system to help organize supplies, 
and reviewed par levels to assess the inventory being 
stored on the unit. 

HCSEC Conference, Pinnacle & Summit Awards, Breakthrough Awards

Twenty-one employees traveled to New Orleans to 
represent GSHCS at the 20th Annual HealthCare Service 
Excellence Conference in January, which culminated with 
an awards night in which Good Shepherd was recognized 
as having the top Service Excellence Council for 2019. 
The Service Excellence Council (SEC) is currently 
comprised of nineteen staff members representing 
executive leadership, providers, management, frontline 
employees alike. The SEC is tasked with providing 
focused representative leadership to implement and 

monitor the progression of GSHCS in becoming the 
Provider of Choice and Employer of Choice in the 
communities we serve.

Additionally, GSHCS employees were recognized in the 
following categories: 

•

Service Excellence Ambassador:
Jerene Barndt, Quality Department

•

Exceptional Nurse: Ashly Lehman, RN,
Emergency Department

•

DO IT Improvement of the Year: Emergency
Department’s Psych Menu project,
spearheaded by Jennifer Tulloch and
Monica Betts

•

Medical Clinic of Choice: Good Shepherd
Women’s Center

GSHCS was invited to deliver a presentation to attendees 
examining our efforts to implement Lean framework 
throughout the organization in order to energize our 
commitment to building a world-class service culture. 
While we still consider ourselves in the infancy of our 
Lean journey, we are excited about the successes we’ve 
achieved to-date in engaging employees to identify and 
reduce waste, track key performance metrics (KPIs), and 
embrace a disciplined, problem-solving culture where 
root causes are found and systemic process-based 
improvements are implemented. We look forward to 
continuing on our journey in developing a culture of 
continuous improvement and creating the most value for 
our customers. 

GoodShepherd HealthCareSystemAccountability Audit–YearIII

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Y:\Client Files\SEI Clients\Good Shepherd Health Care System\Workbooks\Year III\11_Accountability Audit-Year III\Audit Report\GSHCS_Accountability_Audit_Report_YR3.doc