RWJBarnabas Health Northern Region

Nancy Holecek, Senior Vice President and Chief Nursing Officer, Northern Region

As the Senior Vice President for Patient Care Services, Nancy has enhanced and improved health care quality, education and professionalism in numerous ways by creating and implementing the following initiatives:

The Nursing Center for Professional Development. This Center provides the professional nurse not only with guidance, but with a centralized resource of learning opportunities to assist in their development and enhancement of professional practice, as well as career goal achievement.

• The Introduction of the Nursing Report Card. This system-wide initiative provides a sophisticated and consistent measurement of quality across the health care system. The report card measures patient satisfaction, clinical outcomes and human resources and provides benchmarks to evaluate and improve nursing.
• A Peer Review process unique to RWJBarnabas Health enables review of nursing care by nursing peers to evaluate whether the expectations for the proper standard of care have been met.

Prior to her appointment to RWJBarnabas Health Senior Management Team in 1996, Ms. Holecek served as Vice President for Patient Care Services at Saint Barnabas Medical Center, where she participated as a member of that organization's Senior Management Team and played a key role in the development of case management, quality improvement and patient satisfaction initiatives. Ms. Holecek developed and oversaw implementation of a comprehensive nursing peer review process, created a formal competency assessment program, and established benchmarks against which trends in key indicators of patient care performance could be tracked over time and across settings. She has experience in reengineering and work redesign as Project Coordinator for same in 1990 and 1991. Ms. Holecek began her career at Saint Barnabas Medical Center in 1982 as a Registered Nurse in Critical Care. In the years leading to her appointment as Vice-President, she had several patient care management positions with increasing responsibility.

Nancy has devoted her career to advancing the profession of nursing as a whole. With style and grace she has contributed to nursing competency throughout New Jersey by envisioning programs that instill responsibility and leadership. Sensitive to the cultural differences among the six hospitals and other facilities of RWJBarnabas Health she has worked effectively to balance the needs of nurses throughout the state. Her support at the staff level has led to her high credibility and admiration with nurses throughout the system who know her to be fair, especially when it comes to tough decision-making. She is a leader who follows through until a resolution is achieved. Her innovative models of nursing care have been recognized among her profession and serve as an example for other health care systems. She has promoted the value of education for nurses as it relates to patient care, patient satisfaction, nursing recruitment and retention, and utilizes the resources available to her to the fullest to achieve these goals.

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