It’s all about excellence—and compassion. Although she was a business student at the University of Memphis, Mary Hammons was so impressed and inspired by the level of compassionate care her grandmother received from the ICU nurses at Baptist Central that she chose to enter nursing school, instead. Her passion for ensuring that other patients receive the same level of dedicated attention as her beloved Nana, has never left her. 

 

Her career has led her from nursing into staff development, nursing instructorship, service as a legal consultant on nursing, and eventually up the administrative ladder to the top office at Delta Medical, but Hammons has not lost touch with her roots or her values, which manifest themselves daily in the programs that encourage Delta’s staff to reach higher, serve compassionately, and smile more—and in the process, turn Delta Medical into a unique and exceptional facility.

 

 

While serving as a nursing consultant for Armstrong, Allen, Prewitt, Gentry, Johnson & Holmes, a firm that defends hospitals, I was asked to teach an in-service to the staff at Delta. After my presentation, the Delta CEO asked if I would consider replacing their CNO, who had just resigned.

 

That was in 2000. Although my original plan was to just help out for one year, through the Joint Commission accreditation, after meeting the exceptionally team oriented managers and employees at DMC, I decided to stay. 

 

I love facing challenges and exploring new territory. I enjoyed the role of CNO, and made a lot of changes; but when the CEO asked if I could take on the job of COO—not a usual offer for a nurse, I agreed to give this additional challenge a try. After two years, the board came back and asked me to become CEO.

 

This is not what I planned to be when I grew up; I was very happy in my nursing role. Although I didn’t knock, these other doors just opened and I went through them, enjoying the rewarding challenge they provided—and the opportunity to enhance patient care.

 

The larger changes were all about compassion and customer service. I think you have to truly love patient care. You have to seek to be excellent at patient care.

 

I’m a firm believer that if you don’t want to give your very best to the patient—if you don’t want to be 100 percent hospitable, customer service-oriented and friendly, then this is not the hospital for you. Having those words MEAN something—making a real impact and changing the culture to one where mediocre is no longer acceptable—that’s an achievement I’m proud of.

 

Our big vision is to be the hospital of choice for patients, employees, and physicians, all three, and that requires unrelenting pursuit of excellence.  

 

It’s a combination. Last fall we initiated a hospitality program – a bit different in that as CEO, I participate in the training and share my vision with employees. If they don’t want to smile every day, if they don’t want to be nice to patients, or meet other requirements, they have my permission to opt out. It’s okay not to work here. But if this is who they want to be as a nurse, we’ll show them how to do that; we give them the tools and communication skills.

 

The program includes a lot of role-playing, a lot of practicing. Our managers also go through some pretty intensive training so they can reinforce those concepts up on the floor. We have recently put our physicians through similar training.

 

That’s a HUGE cultural change—not just within this hospital. Doctors and nurses often consider themselves unofficial bosses of the patient. We change their focus to giving the patient choices, and allowing them to participate in their own care, instead of telling them what they’re going to do. It more respectful – and it’s more compassionate.

 

It certainly makes a difference. Everyone who works 1,000 hours a year is eligible for annuity benefits that are paid by the hospital; the employees don’t have to contribute a cent. Since we just purchased the hospital, one half of our income goes to pay off the debt, the other half goes to the employees’ annuity. Everything this hospital earns goes back to the employees; and once the debt is paid, that will be significant.

 

It helps them to recognize that “Every good thing I do is good for the patients, good for the hospital, and good for me.”

 

To our knowledge, we’re the only hospital in the country that has a plan like this.

 

One of the major challenges has been our location near an industrial area. Nurses who have migrated to Memphis point out that in New York City, excellence in quality is not about where you are, it’s about who you are; some of the best hospitals in New York are in questionable parts of town. One of my biggest challenges on the marketing front is getting the community to recognize that it’s not about where we are, it’s about the hospital being the best.

 

We have gates, we have a super security staff, and we manage a very safe environment.

 

Things happen in parking lots everywhere, all the time; maybe God has just blessed us, but for the most part, we are very safe.

 

Another challenge has involved expanding our services. We are a community hospital that provides for many chronic care patients. Most of our surgeries are related to chronic diseases like diabetes, sickle cell anemia, congestive heart failure, and peripheral vascular disease. We do over 700 eye surgeries a year, including retinal and glaucoma surgery for diabetic patients.

 

There’s more glory in heart surgery—but reaching out to those who will always have a chronic disease—that’s a little bit more challenging. You can’t surgically ‘fix’ diabetes; it’s a continually ongoing process.

 

Our biggest plan for next year is to complete a wellness center that’s dedicated to patient education and teaching. We have a very nice physical therapy facility in the medical office building; we’d like to link those two into one large wellness center for our chronic care patients.

We have a large family-based geriatric and senior care program here and we also have plans to grow that.

 

There’s also our new Delta Works—an industrial clinic. We get a lot of industrial area patients coming into our E.R. We decided the best thing was to treat them in their own clinic, just for workers comp injuries, urine drug screens, and employment physicals; we just opened it in May and plan a somewhat more formal opening in the near future.

 

The Delta Works program includes free health and wellness fairs for any industry that signs up for our program. For us, it’s all about continuing the concept of preventive healthcare before patients reach the kidney failure and diabetes stages.

 

Not a single thing. I enjoy my life, family, and career.