Each year, we celebrate our partners and highlight the important impact they make in healthcare during our annual, two-day virtual gathering, CONNECT!Â
CONNECT 2025 was no different. This year our theme was: Innovation. Engagement. Impact.
CONNECT | DAY 1
On our first day we looked back on the success stories of partners including Banner Health and Ballad Health, showcasing the impact investing in human development has on team engagement, clinician well-being and clinical excellence.Â
“When organizations start with the high reliability journey and the goal to impact harm reduction, the research shows ROI increases, safety events decrease, and patient recommendations increase.”
-Carisa Bamford, Development Sr. Director at Banner Health
“We’ve had a statistically significant increase in engagement in our nursing staff, which is particularly important as nursing engagement is decreasing nationwide.”Â
-Lisa Smithgall, SVP, Chief Nursing Executive at Ballad Health
Practicing Excellence CEO Gidon Margolin was also joined by two innovative thought leaders and Practicing Excellence senior advisors, Bob Garry and Dr. Heidi Wald.
Bob Garry, former Senior Vice President of Human Resources for Hackensack Meridian Health, joined Gidon for a conversation on how to foster effective team engagement, and what it looks like when done well. Bob share that top-performing organizations will see engagement that looks like this:
- Engagement permeates and connects throughout the entire organization when modeled from the top down
- The environment is shaped by the co-creation efforts based on human-centered design principles
- Connection leads to a sense of ownership and loyalty where individuals see themselves as “owners” rather than “renters”
Denver Health Chief Quality Officer Dr. Heidi Wald brought powerful insights on the importance of clinical excellence, requiring effective communication of challenging concepts in simple ways regardless of training level, and the importance that physicians can’t be exempt from safety and reliability. Here are some key takeaways from their conversation:
- The behaviors, actions, and mindsets of leaders are what drive culture transformation, and can enable everyone showing up for safety
- Leaders need to ensure they are doing their best to optimize their policies and procedures to make work less difficult for their people
- Help ensure the workforce is prepared to work together in your system, including language to escalate, safety debriefs, and continuous improvement
CONNECT | DAY 2
We started day 2 by celebrating the winners of our 6th Annual Practicing Excellence Awards!Â
These organizations and individuals have leaned into human development, strengthened connection, and elevated the experience for patients and caregivers. We are grateful to partner with exceptional leaders and teams that bring this level of intention to their work and mission!
- WellMed Medical Management, 🏆COMMITMENT TO MASTERY AWARD
- Virtua Health, 🏆COMMITMENT TO CULTURE AND TEAMWORK AWARD
- Children’s Primary Care Medical Group, Inc., 🏆COMMITMENT TO THE CAREGIVER EXPERIENCE AWARD
- Ballad Health, 🏆PRACTICING EXCELLENCE CENTER OF EXCELLENCE AWARD
- Hoag Health System, 🏆 SPIRIT OF INNOVATION AWARD
- Ruth Ann Adell, DO, MBA, 🏆PRACTICING EXCELLENCE VISIONARY AWARD
- Dr. Adam Breslow, 🏆 LEADER AWARD OF EXCELLENCE
- Dr. Genevieve Parsons, 🏆 LEADER AWARD OF EXCELLENCE
- Dr. Ken Morris, 🏆 LEADER AWARD OF EXCELLENCE
- Andrew Bartlett, D.O., 🏆CLINICAL LEADER OF THE YEAR
- Dr. Adrienne Lostetter, 🏆COACH OF THE YEAR
- Chris Hodgin, 🏆 PROJECT MANAGER OF THE YEAR
- Toby Laek, 🏆 PROJECT MANAGER OF THE YEAR
- Kamiron Rose, 🏆PROJECT MANAGER OF THE YEAR
- Donny Golden, 🏆PROJECT MANAGER OF THE YEAR
- Amanda Barnes, BSHA, 🏆PROJECT MANAGER OF THE YEAR
- Claire DeVries, MA, 🏆PROJECT MANAGER OF THE YEAR
CONNECT 2025 wrapped up with several powerful partner spotlights. Read some of the key takeaways below!
Corewell Health
Corewell Health has worked strategically to reduce barriers to engaging team members in the Practicing Excellence skill-building journey by:
- Listening to leaders who share what’s worked best for their teams implementing Practicing Excellence
- Discussing tip video topics in the middle of a team meeting vs at beginning or end when people are distracted
- Encouraging leaders to support teams’ peer-to-peer sharing and collaboration
Hoag Health System
To enhance site engagement with Practicing Excellence at Hoag Health System, site managers worked closely with team leads to create a board to highlight skill-building topics. When leaders facilitated learning in non-traditional ways, they found quick and meaningful ways to embed learning into normal meetings and huddles.
“Practicing Excellence aligned with our overall goals in that we set out on an initiative to revamp how we were listening to our patients, and so we transitioned into a new survey system. One of the things that we learned was how patient experience is teamwork in action. So it became really critical to strengthen that coordinated care. What we saw from our data for the medical group, both in our NPS and provider scores, is that really smooth line that trends upward. And that is a really fun trend line to watch.”
 Sara Martin, Hoag Experience ManagerÂ
Hackensack Meridian Health
We heard an exciting “Where are they now?” story from Becky Kaiser, Director of Patient Experience Operations at Hackensack Meridian Health.
Hackensack led an initiative to focus on support for nurse leaders—in leadership development, work-life balance, and creating opportunities to connect and thrive with other nurse leaders.
Through Practicing Excellence, nurse leaders completed reflection journals each week after viewing a skill-building tip video. They journaled about how they incorporated the tip into work or home life and the ways this ritual helped them to either feel better at work or disconnect at home to focus on their families. It was rewarding for Hackensack nurse leaders to see this impact from applying microlearning content mapped to their nurse development initiatives.
Children’s Primary Care Medical Group
For Children’s Primary Care Medical Group, Inc. (CPCMG), the power of human development has changed the way leaders apply feedback, engage their people, and empower the healthcare workforce to thrive. Here is a summary of what each exceptional leader from CPCMG shared with us:
I received a staff 360 review and heard that there was one thing that I was doing that the team didn’t want to see. It was Practicing Excellence’s growth mindset skill-building videos that helped me to better converse with my teammates in a non-judgmental or defensive way, enabling me to learn how to listen and respond to feedback.
Adam Breslow, MD
We discussed engagement scores to improve retention of staff and clinician, and our scores reflect that our staff will remain with us when we’re engaged. In addition, our wellness survey was significantly better from prior year, and we had decreased turnover with our clinicians.
Genevieve Parsons, MD, FAAP
Stephen Beeson, MD once said, “If you want to succeed, keep your people and keep your patients.” Practicing Excellence is a conduit for us to do just that, and we’ve already seen the success that’s come from that.
Kenneth Morris, MD FAAP
Thank you to our exceptional partners and guests who joined us for CONNECT 2025 as we looked back at where we’ve been, spent time learning from each other to improve the continuum of healthcare, and energized the virtual room with a look ahead at what’s next for Practicing Excellence.Â
Catch up on all the insights in our LinkedIn feed, and we hope to see you next year!
Nick Chicchetti is a Marketing Specialist at Practicing Excellence, specializing in developing, implementing, and analyzing marketing strategies and development of content. He brings over five years of healthcare marketing experience, and has a passion for driving change and improving experiences across the healthcare continuum.
