Advancing Healthcare Quality

“Be as flavorful as possible!”

There is a richness in the vibrant community of Miami that creates in its children an appreciation for a vast array of sights, sounds, flavors, and people. Talking this month with Toshka N. Nelson, MBA, PMP, CPHQ, ITIL, known to me as “TK,” I gained an appreciation of the influences that have shaped her life and her career, including her childhood in Miami. TK is not a traditional healthcare quality professional, but she is part of a growing base of business professionals working to advance healthcare quality today. 

Growing up, TK was very integrated into the professional lives of her parents. Her earliest memories are of sitting by her mother while she attended nursing classes. Throughout her childhood, TK spent time with her mother at work. The hospital became a familiar place to her. TK’s father was a businessperson who went from selling cars to starting a medical supply company in Jamaica. He seized the opportunity to contribute to the people of his home country using his business skills. TK learned from both and eventually decided to pursue a career in the business of healthcare.

Seeking to be exposed to different roles and perspectives, TK has held a variety of professional positions in healthcare. She reflects, “My life-long pursuit has been to connect the dots across the continuum of care.”  This is core to who TK is as a professional. Her experiences have honed her skills to lead change and improve quality, performance, and process outcomes across a variety of healthcare settings.

Today, she is the senior director of strategy and business operations-clinical technology serving to advance the Kaiser Permanente national clinical technology operating model. Her team of healthcare operations professionals, data analysts, and internal consultants are leveraging the scale of Kaiser Permanente to advance opportunities for members to have access to the right medical equipment at the right time to receive quality care at the lowest cost. TK impresses upon her team the importance of understanding the real need they are working to address. She explains, “Technology is the muscle to meet needs, but many times we focus on the technology to such an extent that we fail to understand the need. We must work backward. If we want to achieve an objective or outcome, what is the information we need to know? How do we get that information? How do we interpret and apply the information?”

With expertise in healthcare operations, strategy, technology, and project management, TK may seem like an unlikely candidate to sit for the CPHQ. But here again, TK connects the dots. She explains by asking and answering a fundamental question: “What is healthcare focused on? Identifying problems and fixing them. I love when people who don’t see me as a traditional healthcare quality professional ask me why I am a CPHQ. It gives me an opportunity to ask them what healthcare quality means to them. After all, quality takes so many forms. If we were to embed the word quality into the job titles of all those who play a role, we would begin to understand that there really are many ways to advance quality.”

Fascinated by TK’s experiences and perspectives on healthcare quality, I asked her what she thinks the future holds for healthcare. “I actually think we are moving in the right direction,” she responded. “We need to continue to merge the thinking of our clinical and business professionals. Each side advances by understanding how the other works and how we need to be coordinated to ensure quality care for the patient. I respect nurses who, during the pandemic, were faced with resource issues and became a part of the team working to overcome the supply chain problems. They were healthcare heroes not only to their patients, but to their organizations as well.”

To healthcare quality professionals seeking to advance, TK has this advice: “Gain as much understanding as possible. Seek a variety of experiences that expose you to different perspectives and needs. Use that to help you see the picture end to end. And be as flavorful as possible.”

TK reminds me once again that the profession of healthcare quality is constantly redefining itself to advance quality care. Her quest to understand, her panoramic perspective, her passion for inclusivity, and her fundamental optimism, leave me hopeful about the future as well.  

Emmett T. Ervin, MPA, CPHQ
NAHQ President