Eye Center Team Wins the Innovators of the Year Award

On December 15, 2017 the UMass Memorial senior leadership team announced the 2017 Innovators of the Year Award recipients. This award recognizes teams from across the health care system for their outstanding contributions in achieving True North goals by successfully implementing caregiver ideas.

This year's selection process was extremely competitive and it was announced that there has been an unprecedented three-way tie for this year's top spot. The three top winning team were: UMass Memorial Health Care: Information Services' Desktop Services, UMass Memorial Medical Center: 6 East, and UMass Memorial Medical Center: Eye Center!

Dr. Eric Dickson, CEO of UMass Memorial said: “I would like to congratulate all the teams nominated for the Innovators of the Year Award. It’s your fantastic work that inspires all of us at UMass Memorial Health Care to “think outside of the box” and continually innovate on behalf of our patients and community of caregivers”.

This year more than 50 teams were nominated for this award, and 16 teams reached the stage of finalists, also known as: “The Sweet 16”. Dr. Shlomit Schaal, Chair of the Department of Ophthalmology & Visual Sciences said: “it is truly amazing and heartwarming to see what great collaborative team work can achieve.

The ideas implemented this year at the Eye Center resulted in a significant improvement in the services that we provide to our patients. Over the last year, the wait time at the Eye Center has decreased to less than 5 minutes, while the number patients seen increased by 30%”. Dr. Schaal credits the Eye Team members for their many original ideas that were successfully implemented this year.

“The Eye Team consists of Doctors, Administrative Assistants, ASR’s and Technicians, who all work together as a team to achieve goals. I credit the following people for the significant changes that were implemented this year: Darlene Bocash-Winn (Team co-Leader Clinical Operations and Manager), Marissa O’Connor (CITC coach), Christine Vallee, (Senior Director Ambulatory Services).

Dr. David Hinkle, Dr. Gabriel Luna, Dr. George Asdourian, Dr. Priya Janardhana, Dr. Haijiang Lin, Dr. Misha Faustina, Dr. Juan Ding, Dr. Omar Helmy, Jacquelyn Volke, Sharon Furbish, Lori Keefe, Jaime Hayes, Tina Bergeron, Aline Henrique, Diamond Parilla, Jason McTigue, Alexis Tindall, Sherri Granger, Katlyn Champagne, Evelyn Umara, David Rivera, Manisha Anand, Carrie Morton, and Krasimir Tolev.

I would also like to thank the senior leadership of UMass Memorial Healthcare, UMass Memorial Medical Group, and UMass Chan Medical School for their continuous support of the mission of the Eye Center, none of this progress would have been possible without their active sponsorship and enthusiastic encouragement”.