Quality Professionals are the People Who Ask, “Why?”

Yolanda Wilson, MSN, RN, CPHQ, HACP, did not aspire to be a quality professional when she began her career in Newfoundland, Canada. Yet today she is the vice president, quality improvement, for Louisiana Healthcare Connections. Yolanda remembers being fully gratified serving as a bedside nurse at the time she emigrated to the United States. Seeking a more convenient schedule to care for her small children, Yolanda took a job as a quality analyst in Corpus Christi, Texas, and her career trajectory changed.  

It is with gratitude that Yolanda recalls: “I had the great fortune of working for a wonderful mentor. She saw something in me I did not. She told me the people who ask ‘Why?’ are the people who should get into quality. I was one of those people.” Eventually, a director of quality position opened in a new Kindred Healthcare facility. At her mentor’s urging, Yolanda interviewed and was hired for the position. “I learned so much working for a small facility where I had to wear many hats,” Yolanda reflects. “Every day was a challenge, and I was always learning something new.” 

From there, Yolanda decided to expand her perspective by taking on the challenge of a new role in a multi-facility system and eventually moved into a position that was regional in scope. Finally realizing that quality really was her career journey, Yolanda studied and sat for her Certified Professional in Healthcare Quality® (CPHQ), and she is a strong advocate for the credential. “CPHQ is such a badge of honor,” she says. “I encouraged all my staff to pursue it then and continue to do so now.”  

Recently, Yolanda left the acute care setting and transitioned into managed care. Always up for a challenge, this new position has given her the opportunity to get out of her comfort zone and pursue population health.    

“I was very intimidated at first but what I learned was that all the foundational skills of quality applied, however I had to look at it through a different lens,” she states. “I was now on the other side of the fence.” Yolanda goes on to explain, “In a hospital role a quality professional works on improvement initiatives that may impact a population of 100. Managed care is a multiplier, the impact of quality initiatives in this setting can impact hundreds of thousands of patients. In either case, measurement is the long game, but in managed care we must take a much broader, multidisciplinary approach. Our goal should be to build a quality army across the world and across disciplines.” 

Leaders like Yolanda are the future of healthcare quality. And with the explosion of data systems and analytical resources, quality can reach a new level by tackling health equity and addressing social determinants of health. Today, this is what inspires Yolanda. “We are finally tapping into how to impact the healthcare environment by getting into the underlying drivers that lead to adverse health and lack of resources,” she adds. “In doing so, we also have an opportunity to draw more professionals into the realm of healthcare quality. We are finally coming out from behind the scenes and leading the change.”  

Still, Yolanda points out that healthcare quality professionals need to keep up a dynamic environment by advancing their education and skills sets, pursuing CPHQ certification, and educating other healthcare professionals that quality is an important and gratifying professional path that does not have to start with an earning registered nurse credentials. “Fifteen years into my quality journey, I work with so many quality professionals who are not nurses, and the wonderful thing is they help us see quality through a different lens,” Yolanda says. “Their perspective is faceted and helps us address the issues in creative ways.” 

When I ask Yolanda how far she thinks the healthcare quality professional can go, she replies: “The sky is really the limit. We touch so many different areas. Today, there are so many options and so many practice environments. People can tailor their careers to their aspirations, sensibilities, and ambitions. Even now, as an executive, I have places I can go.” Having studied health policy as a part of her master’s degree program, Yolanda sees a natural progression from quality to health policy. Again, Yolanda is the one who asks “Why?” She says: “Why do certain regulatory standards exist? What if we can make positive improvements? How can we move the needle and accelerate positive improvements? I am interested in making change and how change can happen if we take a multipronged approach. If we have the forethought to connect the data dots from one end of the continuum to the other, we translate positive outcomes to health policy and legislation. But we need to rally more people to the journey.” 

Yolanda and I share this perspective. That is why we are here. 

Emmett T. Ervin, MPA, CPHQ
NAHQ President

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