Deborah Zastocki is CEO of Chilton Memorial Hospital in Pompton Plains, NJ, but for the purposes of this interview, I focused on her prior career as a registered nurse. I recently spoke with Deborah about a shift in thinking whereby healthcare executives are now seeing nurses not as overhead but as rainmakers. What that means is that given their greater interactive roles with patients, nurses will be increasingly important to the hospital's financial health as doctors do more work outside the hospital and nurses become the primary touchpoint for patients. Since nurses have more opportunities than ever before to influence quality, and since most people believe incremental gains in hospital reimbursement are beginning to hinge on quality measures, nurse morale and retention will be increasingly important.
