“Yes, Annabelle?” Mr. Gilreath said.
“Oh, you are going to take us to Beverly Hills, California?” Annabelle asked in a hopeful voice.
Amused, Mr. Gilreath smiled and answered, “I would love to, Annabelle. But I meant the Beverly Hills Supper Club in Newport, Kentucky.”
Everyone laughed at this, but now, with a motive to improve their department, they began to work harder.
In October 1973, Raj found out she was pregnant again. Once again, we kept this news to ourselves, not sharing it with our parents because we did not want them to worry. Raj seemed to be getting along well. She rested much more, and I also took extra pains to remind her not to do so much work around the house. Subhash was walking by this time, so Raj did not have to carry him as often, and the young ladies in our neighborhood were a great help to her, often visiting the house while I was at work to see how Raj was doing and to let their children play together.
In June, our neighbor Nancy Hollinger threw Raj a baby shower. The other ladies from the neighborhood gathered at Nancy’s house, bringing gifts for Raj and the baby. They played games, drank tea, and ate snacks. Raj seemed to enjoy herself and appreciated this gesture from Nancy. It was a great comfort to her to have a woman close to her own age to confide in and to take an interest in her baby and her wellbeing.
One summer evening in June 1974, Providence Hospital hosted the quarterly medical staff dinner meeting at the Crosley Mansion Courtyard, which was part of the hospital campus. I volunteered to cook the steaks, and I spent most of my time in front of the flaming grill with Mayer Kray, the assistant administrator of maintenance and engineering. I wore a tall white chef’s hat, and with my experience in cooking, I enjoyed flipping the fresh steaks high into the air, catching them expertly on the spatula, and throwing them back on the grill. I put on quite a performance, and as the doctors arrived, they watched me at the grill.
With dozens of steaks to cook, Mayer and I had no time to get our own drinks. Eniko, the food service director, made routine rounds to fill our glasses.
“Kris, drink up!” he’d say, filling my glass to the brim.
I did drink up, and before long, I was in high spirits, flipping the steaks even more exuberantly. Sometimes I accidentally dropped a steak on the ground. Grabbing it with the tongs, I placed it back on the grill. “No harm done!” I called out.
At around 8:30 p.m., my citywide pager beeped. Having such a great time drinking and cooking the steaks, I ignored it. About ten minutes later, Mr. Gilreath came over and said, “Kris, Raj has been trying to call you. I think you need to go home.”
I set down my drink and turned over another steak, examining it to see if it was nearly finished. “No, she is okay,” I said. Raj had been in labor with Subhash for 24 hours so I figured I had plenty of time.
“Kris, go home,” Mr. Gilreath said in a firm voice, leaving no room for argument.
When I saw how serious he was, I sobered up. “Okay, okay, I’ll go home.”
I called Raj from the phone in the lobby and told her that I was coming.
“I’m not feeling well, Kris,” she said. “Please hurry.”
I was not about to go without taking a steak with me. I went back to the grill, cooked two more steaks, finished my drink, and put the steaks on a plate.
When I walked in the door, our neighbor Skip was sitting with Raj. I said, “Skip, what are you doing here? Go home.”
“Raj called me,” Skip replied, looking concerned.
Raj felt embarrassed at my rudeness, and she could also tell I had been drinking. She gave me a hard look and turned to Skip. “Take Subhash with you. I’m going to the hospital.”
As Skip left with Subhash, I took the two steaks out of a bag along with a bottle of steak sauce.
“Let’s sit down and have steak first,” I told Raj.
Raj stared at me. “No, I have to go to the hospital!”
“You’ll be fine,” I said as I went to the kitchen for a fork and a steak knife. “These steaks are all the way from Chicago Stockyards. It’s not every day you get to eat one of these!”
Raj looked at me in astonishment. “Kris, I have already called Dr. Brunsman. He is getting everything ready for me at the hospital. You must take me right now!” Her voice rose to a high pitch, and her eyes flashed angrily.
I cut off a chunk of steak, slathered it in the sauce, and put it in my mouth. “Mm, this is good. You should try some, Raj,” I said, cutting another smaller piece and pushing the plate toward her.
“Kris, I have to go right away! Maybe we should call the ambulance.” She started to walk to the phone.
“No, no. I will drive you.”
“Do you know the way to the hospital?” Raj asked.
I forked another bite of steak into my mouth, and chewed with great enjoyment. It was perfect, it was juicy, and it was everything a steak should be. Raj watched me, tears forming in her eyes as she waited for an answer.
“Of course I know how to get there,” I said.
Raj’s delivery would take place at Christ Hospital in downtown Cincinnati, since Providence Hospital did not have a labor and delivery unit. I sped toward the hospital as fast as I could, hoping a cop would pull us over, so I could explain the situation and he would escort us to the hospital. No such luck. Instead, after driving for 30 minutes, we ended up right in front of our driveway. By this time it was around 9:30 p.m., and Dr. Brunsman had been waiting for us at the hospital for more than an hour.
Raj burst into tears. “You are too drunk to drive!” she cried. “You took the wrong exit. We should have called the ambulance.”
“Stay calm,” I said. “I will take you to the hospital.”
This time we made it to Christ Hospital, and immediately, the nurses whisked Raj away to labor and delivery.
Several hours later, as I sat in the waiting room, Mayer and Eniko showed up with a bottle of Chivas Regal and some steaks. The dinner meeting was over, and knowing I would be here, they wanted to celebrate with me. It was close to midnight, and Mayer and Eniko were pretty drunk by this time.
“Kris, Kris, let’s have another drink! To celebrate your new child. May it be a son!”
I agreed, thinking, why not? We all started to pass the bottle around when a nurse came over to us. “You can’t drink that here,” she scolded. “This is a hospital.”
“But his wife is giving birth to a child!” Eniko yelled, slurring his words. “He is going to be a father again!”
We all were laughing and speaking loudly. The nurse looked embarrassed, and seeing that we weren’t going to cooperate, she told us we could move to the nurse’s lounge. “But you still cannot drink here,” she said. “This is a hospital.”
“Who gives a shit?” I slurred. “I am the assistant administrator at Providence Hospital!”
Mayer and Eniko hooted encouragement, but the nurse was appalled. Knowing that my wife was in labor, she didn’t make a big to-do about it, but only shook her head and left us in the nurse’s lounge.
Our second son was born at 1:30 a.m. on Tuesday, June 26, 1974. As with Subhash, we wanted to pick a name with a strong history of leadership behind it. We decided to call him Christopher, after Christopher Columbus, the great explorer and discoverer of America.
Looking back, I realized that it was not a good decision to ignore the page from my wife, to come home in that condition, and to drive after having drunk so much. But at the time, I did not think I’d had much to drink. I felt horrible about my behavior during a time that was urgent and stressful for Raj. I apologized to Raj afterward, telling her that somehow Eniko doctored the drinks and that I did not realize how strong they were. Raj would not accept my explanation. “You drank it,” she said. “Do not blame Eniko.”
Later, I also apologized to Skip for telling her to go home. She just laughed and said, “That’s okay. I knew you were not yourself.”
Chapter 17
In April 1974, Mr. Gilreath and I hosted a dinner for the eight
y-five SPD employees at the Beverly Hills Supper Club in Newport, Kentucky. We had reached our goal. The soiled reusable items were being processed and distributed according to procedures, and the department looked clean.
The employees wore nice suits and dresses, and we all enjoyed cocktails and an excellent dinner. Mr. Gilreath and I gave short speeches and then went around to speak with the employees and their spouses. The dinner did wonders for boosting their morale. Before, they had been referred to as the “Stupid People Downstairs,” and now they were being wined and dined at a posh club, and the hospital administrator was taking an interest in them.
During my speech, I told them, “You are the ones making this department work. It’s not the system, not the automation. It’s the people who make things happen. It is due to your hard work that we are having this wonderful evening.”
In the meantime, Mrs. Gilreath and I developed a case cart system, making sure that there was a cart loaded with supplies and every surgical instrument needed for each scheduled surgery case. The surgeons would have everything they needed right at their fingertips, whereas before, they might be missing instruments. Also, a lot of instruments were being thrown away in the linens instead of being sent to SPD for reprocessing. The new system would cut down on loss of instruments, saving the hospital money in the long run, and it would also capture the lost revenue from not charging the patients for all the supplies. It would also save the surgeons the hassle of sending their operating room technicians in search of supplies in the middle of an operation.
Unfortunately, the employees did not adapt well to the new system. One day, the nurses took matters into their own hands and refused to transport patients to the surgery department. They did not like all the changes we were making to their supply system, and they decided that this would be the most effective way to get our attention. At 7:00 a.m., while the surgeons were waiting for their patients to arrive for the first surgeries of the day, the nurses walked out on them.
“We’re not going to do anything until our demands are met,” they said.
Mrs. Monahan, the Surgery Department manager, immediately called Mr. Gilreath.
“I’m on my way,” Mr. Gilreath said, slamming down the receiver and immediately calling Mr. Prater, the director of personnel.
“You get your ass over to the hospital,” he growled. “The surgery staff has walked out. They are refusing to transport any patients to the operating rooms.”
After hanging up the phone, Mr. Prater became sick to his stomach and was so nervous that he was struggling to pull himself together.
Meanwhile, Mr. Gilreath sped ninety miles per hour to the hospital. The nurses and operating room technicians stood together in clusters, talking in low voices, and when he stormed into the hallway, a hush fell over the group.
“Who wants to talk to me?” Mr. Gilreath demanded in a loud voice. “You guys have a problem? Who wants to talk to me?”
At first, no one volunteered to speak, but finally, three employees came forward, one of them an OR technician named Robert, who seemed to be the self-appointed ringleader of the surgery staff. He was from a country in Africa and spoke in a British accent.
“We want to meet with you to tell you our demands,” Robert said. “There is a lot going on here that we don’t like.”
Mr. Gilreath was not in the mood for any nonsense. “I’m willing to listen to you at the end of the day, but right now, you get your asses in the OR suites and work with the surgeons to perform surgeries on the patients,” Mr. Gilreath demanded. “Mrs. Monahan, I want you to tell the transportation technician to start transporting patients right now. Line them up in the hallway, and we will see if they will not go to surgery suites to prepare for surgeries.”
The nurses and technicians still would not have it. “We aren’t going to work until we know that you are going to negotiate with us,” they said.
Mr. Gilreath turned on them fiercely. “You walk out on these patients lined up in the hallway, and I will see to it that you get jobs nowhere in the entire country!”
The employees opened their mouths to argue, but the look on Mr. Gilreath’s face silenced them. Seeing that he was not going to back down from his statement, they reluctantly agreed to do the surgeries and to wait until the end of the day to meet with him.
By the time I arrived at work at 8:30, the news about the walkout had spread through the hospital, and the atmosphere was tense. Mr. Gilreath stopped by my office and shared with me what happened. “I’m meeting with them at 3:30, when all the patients are finished,” he said. “They have some nerve to do what they did this morning. If they think I’m going to let them take over the hospital, they are dead wrong.”
At 3:30, all the nurses and technicians came downstairs to the SPD conference room. While Mr. Gilreath went into the room to talk to them, Mr. Poll and I waited anxiously in our offices. An hour and a half later, Mr. Gilreath stopped by our offices.
“It’s done,” he said. “I heard all their complaints, and I’ve gotten them to understand.”
Their chief concern was: “Who is Mrs. Gilreath to make changes, and what are her qualifications? What is she doing with Kris?” This was a sensitive subject with them, and Mr. Gilreath answered “Mrs. Gilreath is a surgical nurse. She has more than fifteen years of experience in the surgery department. She is working with Kris and the preparation/sterilization supervisor to develop the instrumentation, and she has volunteered her service to help the surgery department.”
They accepted this reluctantly, and at one point, someone said, “We know the SPD personnel and Kris Bedi are trying to make things happen, but we prefer going back to the system as it was at St. Mary’s.”
“That will not be acceptable,” Mr. Gilreath said sternly. “Let them finish this study, and let’s see what they come up with. We will discuss the recommendations, and then they will be implemented. All of these changes are for the sake of improving patient care.”
At one point in the meeting, an employee who was slouched in his chair tried to shift his position, getting up slightly so he could sit up straight. Mr. Gilreath, in the middle of speaking, suddenly pointed his finger at the employee and yelled, “Sit down! I’m not done yet!”
Shaken up, his face turning red, the employee stuttered, “Sir, sir, I was not getting ready to leave.”
Mr. Gilreath, Mr. Poll, and I laughed about this later. “You should have seen his face. He looked so scared,” Mr. Gilreath said with a laugh. Then, more seriously, he said, “But it is necessary to put some fear into the employees. If you let them have their own way and take advantage of you, they will be running the hospital, not you.”
At the end of the meeting, the employees felt a little relieved, although not completely satisfied when they realized that Mr. Gilreath wasn’t going to let them go back to the traditional way of doing things. They each shook his hand as they filed out of the room, having promised that from that point on they would cooperate with my efforts to improve their operations.
Later, Mr. Gilreath and I talked about involving people from the Surgery Department in the study. We both felt it would be great to get the ringleader on our side so one day I approached Robert, the OR technician.
“Robert, since you are so concerned with these changes and with patient care,” I said, “we would like you to become a member of our team to work on the surgery study.”
Robert stared at me, stunned. “Me? You want me to help you guys?”
“Sure. We think you would be a great asset to our study.”
“Okay, that would be great,” he said.
I also asked Belinda, an outspoken RN, to join our team. She was always speaking her mind about how the department should be improved, and we thought she would be a good person to have on our side as well.
In September 1974, my team and I finished the report. Mr. Gilreath and the Surgery Department manager helped me present the study to the surgical committee, which consisted of the surgeons and the chief anesthesiologis
t. All along, the surgical committee had viewed the study negatively. The surgeons wanted to do away with the Friesen concept altogether and go back to the way things had been at St. Mary’s Hospital.
During the presentation, the surgeons sat side by side at the other end of the conference table, listening to us with solemn expressions. Dr. Zenni, an orthopedic surgeon and the chief of the committee, sat in the middle. He listened with great interest and asked several pointed questions, but it was difficult to tell what he thought. He had a stern face, and at times, it seemed he would never accept our proposal.
Mr. Gilreath and I were determined. At the end of the presentation, Mr. Gilreath said, “Give us just three months with this new case cart system. Once we implement these changes, we can always go back. I assure you that if these changes do not work as Kris is recommending, I’ll be the first one to revert this whole thing to whatever you guys want. Please just give us three months.”
Dr. Zenni nodded his head solemnly. After conferring momentarily with the other surgeons, he said reluctantly, “Okay, we’ll give you three months. If the system isn’t working by then, we go back to the traditional method.”
Mr. Gilreath and I left the conference room, exchanging a look that meant “Okay, now we’ve got some work to do.”
We set the implementation date, or “D-day” as Mr. Gilreath and I called it, for a weekend in September. On the big day, I arrived in the surgery department at 6:30 a.m. Mrs. Gilreath and Catherine arrived at 6:00 to make sure everything was set up in the SPD Department. The surgeons turned out to be supportive, and the whole day, Mr. Gilreath sat in his office with his eye on the Surgery Department, hoping he wouldn’t have to hear about any problems from the staff.
Overall, the surgery staff was pleased with SPD’s effort. Instead of making thirty to forty calls to SPD because of a missing instrument, they only made three to four calls. The revised case cart system also improved the hospital’s revenue. Since our lists were more complete, the surgery staff only needed to put a checkmark by the used item. In the past, the staff missed charges because no one knew if an item had been used. After a month of following the new system, we found that the revenue in the surgery department increased by almost thirty percent.
Engineering a Life Page 21