PROVIDENCE – Care New England Health System recently announced that Jennifer La Luz was appointed as executive director of operations for Kent County Memorial Hospital, a new role for the hospital.
La Luz has been working at the hospital since 2019, most recently serving as senior director of quality and access. During her tenure, the quality department received several recognitions, including achieving the Joint Commission’s Advanced Total Joint Center of Excellence Accreditation and the Silver Level 2 Geriatric Emergency Department Accreditation from the American College of Emergency Physicians.
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Her oversight of the Access Center helped the hospital reduce and sustain abandoned call rates by 80%, increase call volume by 20%, grow the internal customer base and create a team that helped reduce no-shows for important outpatient tests. Specifically, there was a 30% reduction in no-shows for MRI and CAT scans.
Also, La Luz helped improve access to testing services and was the operational lead to incorporate a mobile CAT scan, which increased capacity by 18%. She was also the operational lead that added another cardiac stress room, increasing both exercise tolerance tests and stimulated echos, as well as nuclear medicine stress test capacity.
Before 2022, La Luz was the director of quality and performance improvement at the hospital. She helped improve the hospital’s Leapfrog Patient Safety Grade from a C to a B and Kent Hospital’s Medicare Stars rating from two to four stars. She was also crucial in helping the hospital earn the Geriatric-Friendly Emergency Department Accreditation from the American College of Emergency Physicians. In addition, she helped the hospital save $40,000.
La Luz earned her bachelor’s degree in anthropology from the University of New Mexico and her MBA from the university’s Anderson School of Management. She has also been deemed as a Certified Professional in Healthcare Quality by the National Association for Healthcare Quality.
The hospital plans to conduct a national search for La Luz’s replacement as director of quality.
Katie Castellani is a PBN staff writer. You can reach her at Castellani@PBN.com.
