Thank you so much for coming to speak at our physician leadership academy. As usual your talk was probably the best and by looking at the evaluations was extremely well received. You continue to amaze me and outdo yourself time and time again. I know after I hear you speak I always feel better about being a physician and a leader and I got the message that our physicians felt that way as well.
More importantly I value you as a colleague and as a friend. You've always been very supportive of me and our physicians. New Orleans is lucky to have you back! I am certain we'll stay in touch in the future and our paths will cross hopefully many times. Thanks Jay for an outstanding talk it was wonderful seeing you again.
Take care Jay.
Shaheed Koury, MD, MBA, FACEP
SVP & CMO/CMIO
Quorum Health
Thank you for sharing with us how to bring joy to both the patient and physician experience. We are grateful for your wisdom and the practical tools and tips you presented that will help Sharp HealthCare as we continue on our way to become the best place to work, best place to practice medicine, and best place to receive care. We are grateful for your passion and commitment to transform the health care experience for each other and those we serve.
Warmly,
Dan Gross, Executive Vice President
Lynn Skoczelas, Chief Experience Officer
Amy Kosifas, Director, Sharp University
Sharp HealthCare
San Diego, CA
I wanted to extend my most sincere gratitude for your presentation yesterday. Your insights were great and I had a great time listening to you. I wanted to know if it was possible to get a copy of the slides that you presented as I believe there are a lot of material that could transcend beyond most of us present.
Wish you the best,
Merbin Carattini, LTC, MS
Commanding General's Innovation Group Chief Regional Health Command Pacific
USARPAC Surgeon's Special Assistant
Dear Sir, thanks for your inspiring talk at ACEP. I found your poem at the end very touching. I have taken the liberty of converting it into an unlisted YouTube video. I think it can inspire and rekindle the spirit of a lot of physicians. However I'll remove it if you would not have it there. Thanks again.
I had a coaching call with Rae Charos, CNE at CHW: St. Joseph Hospital of Stockton today. She mentioned the sustained impact they are experiencing in changed physician behaviors following your presentation to the Medical Executive Board there over 2 months ago. She said with some surprise, that she heard their chief of surgery telling colleagues this week that they needed to get on board, and reviewing some "simple things" that we should all be doing". She said it was as if he was quoting you directly. She also talked about an obstetrician who has "really turned around" in the past two months, so much so that staff are talking about it!
As a speaker, you don't often get the benefit of hearing the impact you have made in the lives of physicians, the staff they work with and the patients the care for. Rest assured you have made a difference in Stockton, California. Thank you for what you do.
Faye Sullivan
StuderGroup
Thanks very much for presenting at our SMG Hospitalist yearly retreat. Improving patient satisfaction was high on our list of goals this coming year and your presentation and guidance is very appreciated to help get us on our way. We found your presentation to be very entertaining and engaging and yet clearly focused on how important patient satisfaction is to physicians and staff. The physicians who participated all told us they were very motivated by your talk and many told me it was the best conference they had attended in years. I feel your presence helped elevate the urgency and importance of this topic to a level where I'm finding it now easy to get physicians to participate in our patient and staff satisfaction initiatives. We feel that with your help we will hit our targets of improving our patient satisfaction scores to the 75% of Press Ganey scoring.
Thank you again.
David Gallagher MD
SMG Hospitalist Program Medical Director
Thank you for your awesome presentations, the time you spent with our leadership sharing your observations and recommendations and for copying the tools for me before you left Friday. I have received great feedback on your visit. Here are a couple of comments:
Dr. Kaplan was all you said he would be, and more! I'm looking forward to working further with him as we bring our ED through these rough waters. His fresh and candid look at the department was much needed. (Dr. Coppola, Medical Director ED)
I just want to thank you for bringing us Dr. Kaplan. His message was terrific in terms of content, and delivery. He is very credible in as much as he does this work on a regular basis, and he has pulled himself up by the bootstraps. The message was right in line w/ what we are trying to do organizationally, and his ability to make it personal to the docs and to the ED staff was wonderful. Again, thanks very much for bringing this to us, I am confident it will help. (Fran Bonardi, VP Patient Care Services)
I'll stay in touch and contact you as we move forward. Again, thank you!!
Sherry Strammiello
Director, Quality/Risk Management
Lawrence & Memorial Hospital
I hope that this week finds you busy with meaningful and worthwhile work! I wanted to take the time to thank you for passing along your knowledge and for the caring attitude that you have for the people who work in your hospital. It was truly a moment of inspiration for me, capturing the heart of what we do. Thank you for also making us laugh…too much intensity "sucks the life" out of the work we do and there is so much reality to our every day in healthcare, that a moment of levity is really valued! Thank you for sharing, for inspiring and for doing what you do! Take care and best wishes for continued success. I look forward to seeing you again.
Kind regards,
Terry Humphrey
Organizational Effectiveness
Regarding your presentation to CHE Leadership Conference April 27, 2004 - Jay - I can't say enough about your presentation to our leaders - it was exactly what we needed. You energized folks, called us to personally reflect on our own journeys, and left us with some very important challenges and 'to dos' - all accomplished with a true sense of style, wisdom and understanding. Thank you for spending the morning with us. And thank you for sharing your gift.
Sincerely,
Diane S. Denny
Vice President, Quality & Patient Safety
Catholic Health East
I want to thank you once again for the time you spent with us on March 14th! Our docs really appreciated the time they had with you and in fact just this morning our chief of Cardiology stopped me to talk about the ongoing impact of your talk. I want to be sure you realize the impact that you had here- but also the impact of the work. I know life in the healthcare business is can be crazy, but you have some special gifts and talents to share- and I am thankful that you fit time in your schedule to share your wisdom and mentor others.
Again- thank you so very much- I wish you all the best!
Kristine K.S. White RN, BSN, MBA
Vice President, Patient Affairs
Spectrum Health
I want to thank for the inspirational presentations you made during your two days at The Children's Hospital in Colorado. Your presentations gave our physicians and staff easy-to-implement tools that can be used immediately. You re-energized all of us to become personally accountable for providing service excellence to the children and families that we serve.
We have had a great deal of positive feedback from the 800+ staff members, physicians, and leaders who had the privilege of hearing you speak. Here are just a few examples:
"This is the best presentation I've heard during my 23 years in healthcare; it reminded me of why I'm here.""
"Dr. Kaplan was superb at delivering a meaningful message that staff and physicians could relate to."
"Every staff member needs to hear this message; what are the plans for bringing Dr. Kaplan back?"
Your sense of humor, passion, and, of course, your background as an ED physician, created quite a stir here at The Children's Hospital. You received a perfect "5" on every single survey from all seven of your presentations--amazing!
I can't thank you enough for taking the time to visit us here in Denver. I hope you'll come back soon.
Sincerely,
Michele Young, Director
The Children's Hospital
It was our pleasure to have you as keynote speaker at the September 29, 2006 Leadership Retreat in Nashville, IN. Your technical skills coupled with your desire to lead by example as a good communicator, at work, and at home . . . captivate your audience. As Dale Carnegie once wrote, one's success is due 85% to human engineering and 15% technical. You possess both!
I am enclosing feedback from our staff. Of all the past leadership retreats, this one was by far the most accepted and enjoyed by all. Today the Director of Surgical Services asked me if she could have a copy of your 'rounding log' so that she can begin logging her rounds. Change is measurable success.
Blessings to you, your family, and your practice.
Sincerely,
Robin Clark
Schneck Medical Center
Seymour, IN
Thank you for your heartfelt presentation last week at the US Army medical system exec skills course - I personally benefited from your 4 hour presentation, and was inspired by your own passion for change/quality improvement in health care systems
I am an army occ med/prev med doc, who currently commands a small, 71 person "medical element" in Honduras that is engaged in both primary care for a 600 person active duty population, as well as public health outreach/humanitarian assistance in Honduras and Central America - I was in the course as preparation for my next job, in July, as the deputy chief of clinical services at the army hospital at Fort Polk, Baynes-Jones Army Community Hospital - after training in prev med in the 80's on an army scholarship, I got out of the army in 91, did occ med in a hospital based clinic for 3 years, then migrated to a group medical practice, Col Springs Health Partners in 94, became a partner, and both worked in and directed the group's occ med/urgent care clinic for 6 years, until it ran into financial problems - leading to a mid-life crisis and a return to the army medical system in 2002 - which led to going to Afghanistan for 8 months 12/02-8/03 - a life changing experience - which leads to my own appreciation for the role you are playing, in essence, challenging us United States docs to open up our heart chakras and reconnect to the spirit of healing in our daily work in a health care system under epochal stress/transformation - I was excited to see that the same system for patient satisfaction that the Army is using is the one that I learned from Kaiser-Permanente in the late 90's when I was working with a network of KP in Col Springs, CO - again, thanks for coming into our world of US Army medicine and helping us do a better job in taking care of the soldiers who are suffering as part of our country's recurrent engagement in armed conflict.
Sincerely,
Bob Pero
LTC(P) Robert T. Pero
Commander, JTFB-MEDEL
Thank you for an astonishingly informative presentation to our Medical Staff, and to our Nursing Directors, on May 8. You presented practical ideas that will improve the work environment and that will improve patient care.
We have never before received comments that the speaker was "astonishing" but we did on your program. Also, of note, was that the migration of physicians out of the auditorium during the lunch period did not occur with your talk, they stayed for the program.
I appreciate your pointing our the difference between wanting to be "satisfactory" compared to "outstanding."
Again, thank you for an enthusiastic and eye-opening program on how we all need to work together and how we can do it more effectively.
Sincerely,
Lynda Kane, CPMSM, Interim Coordinator
Continuing Medical Education
Pomona Valley Hospital and Medical Center
Dave Pietsch and I would like to extend our thanks for joining us as the keynote speaking at our HPH board retread held on April 21-22, 2007 at the JW Marriot Ihilani Hotel. We are very please with the feedback we are receiving and the benefits gained from the retreat.
Your dynamic and entertaining presentations on "Getting Better Faster Than the Other Guy, How to Astonish Your Patients, Staff, and Medical Staff, and think Bowling - How to get from Where You are to Where you Want to Be" motivated and inspired board members as well as our leadership team and other guests.
I am pleased to share with you some of the comments we received about your presentations:
Very informative, inspirational, humorous - tactics we can put immediately to work
Excellent presentation of concepts; addressed multiple perspectives.
Dr. Kaplan is an excellent engaging motivator. Useful information.
Great way to get focused on goals and accountability.
Dr. Kaplan was just "super". His presentation was so valuable and can make a huge difference in organizational performance.
Truly an inspirational speaker.
Thank you very much for your contribution to the success of the HPH Board Retreat.
Charles A. Sted
President and CEO
HPH
Thank you so much for a wonderful session last Friday to Covenant Health's physician and administrative leadership. Without exception, the survey results were extremely positive and I know our group felt the time was very productive, offering all of us information to make us better, whether or not our role takes us to the patient's bedside.
You challenged us. You motivated us. You encouraged us. You "wowed" us. You made us laugh until our stomachs hurt. But, most of all, you inspired us. I'll always remember the story about your dad's tie clip. My dad passed away suddenly about ten years ago of a heart attack at the age of 65 years. He was a laborer who worked very hard to provide for us and I still have his work boots, crusted mud and all, in a special place in my closet. I treasure them because they represent for me the essence of my father. He walked the walk, I'll tell you that. I could tell the way you spoke about your father than you truly honored him.
I appreciate so much the opportunity to have met you and learned from you. As I told you during our conversation at the end of your program, if my family or I ever need emergency care, I hope my physician is someone like you.
Please know that if any of us at Covenant Health can ever be of service or assistance to you, we would be privileged to do so.
Debby Saraceni
Vice President
Covenant Health
Dr. Jay Kaplan has been a consultant for Avera Sacred Heart Hospital from 2004 to 2006. He was retained to present service excellence education to the physicians and staff. He was subsequently asked to help hospital administration improve the hospital work environment for physicians and staff. Dr. Kaplan was onsite at ASHH in December 2004, to interview members of the Medial Staff and Hospital Board members, and to develop an initial assessment, findings, and recommendations to further enhance service excellence and to create a positive work environment for physicians and staff. He was well received by physicians and hospital administration. As a result of Dr. Kaplan's efforts, a Physician Satisfaction Action Plan was developed and implemented in February, 2005.
A Physician Satisfaction Pulse Survey was done of the medical staff in December, 2005 74% of the physicians indicated their satisfaction with the hospital work environment had improved in the past year.
IN January, 2006, Dr. Kaplan followed up with a progress report and presentations made to Medical Staff. As a practicing physician, Dr. Kaplan commanded the respect of the medical staff. His presentations were on target, personalized to the ASHH audience, and relevant to the interests and concern of our medical staff. He also gave a motivational and insightful presentation to ASHH's department mangagers as to how and why they could improve physician and staff excellence.
I highly recommend Dr. Kaplan as an expert, outstanding presenter, and consultant on service excellence and physician hospital relationships.
Pamela J. Rezac, Ed.D., FACHE
President / CEO
Avera Sacred Heart Hospital
