Villa Healthcare Celebrates Kate Catizone as McKnight’s Women of Distinction Rising Star

Kate is kind, empathetic, and the first to highlight the role of team work in any success. She is recognized as a Rising Star because she has a commitment to patient care and improving quality through using data, research and her problem solving skills.

SKOKIE, Ill. (PRWEB)
March 03, 2020

Villa Healthcare celebrates Kate Catizone, Director of Clinical Applications, on her win for McKnight’s Women of Distinction Rising Star. McKnight’s Long-Term Care News created the “Women of Distinction” honors to recognize those who inspire others in the skilled nursing world through their powerful impact on residents and colleagues.

Kate always wanted to work in healthcare and considered being a nurse to fulfill her desire to connect with others and better understand how to help. She’s been empathetic her entire life, listening to others, taking care of others, and trying to make sense of problems. Kate says, “All I want to do is to improve the care for each person.” After volunteering with seniors, she found a position that seemed to match both her passion for healthcare and new interest in senior care. Kate accepted a position at Villa Healthcare as an Executive Assistant, but over the course of three years excelled to a Director position. Kate shares, “I’ve never loved a job like this. I’ve never learned and grown so much.” If you were to ask her colleagues and supervisors, they’d echo her growth, but point out her strong growth mindset and the work she has done.

At Villa, Kate leads a team that oversees clinical applications for Villa. This includes implementation of the new Informatics Help Desk System that navigates facilities with user access requests and issues, as well as programs used throughout the organization such as Point Click Care, Wound Rounds and TSI. But her passion lies in the numbers, statistics, and data. To Kate, this information is not abstract – each metric measured relates to a real person receiving care at a Villa center. Improved data means the team is able to provide improved care, and that all leads back to the most important focus, the patient.

Kate investigates patient care through a meta-lens to determine how to improve issues. While sitting in a pharmacy meeting, Kate heard about an emerging issue with patients being prescribed excessive amount of medications. Kate wanted to better understand the issue, so she pulled data from every patient about the number of prescriptions they were getting. Over the course of 2019, she refined the process and shared the information with center-level leadership. Through using this information, over 150 patients on 20-plus medications have been reduced. This milestone, achieved through data means improved care as well as increased awareness for prescribers.

Another area that improved with Kate’s focus is weight loss. Across the facilities, weight loss has reduced from 8.5% to 4.6% from March to November 2019, well below the National Average of 5.5%. And the long-stay pressure injuries, which were at 7.9% in March, have dropped to 6.7% in November, which is under the National Average of 7.3%. While Kate is the first to point out that care from nurses, doctors, and nursing assistants positively impact the care, it is obvious that her attention to the numbers and getting the information out starts the improvement process.

Every patient at a Villa center benefits from Kate’s attention to the numbers and focus on finding patterns, even if they don’t know her name. She knows each patient is more than a number, but that she can contribute to better care in using that information. Kate is kind, empathetic, and the first to highlight the role of team work in any success. She is recognized as a Rising Star because she has a commitment to patient care and improving quality through using data, research and her problem solving skills.

We’re Villa, and we make people better. Of course, we’re focused on quality care and good outcomes. But we’re here to do so much more. Villa’s leadership has a vision of rising above the status quo—of never settling, and of shattering the old image of this industry. We’ve always wanted to be a part of something greater, and we’re making that a reality. Our commitment to our people, our environment and clinical programs will allow us to fulfill our mission of making people better. For more information, please visit http://www.VillaHC.com.

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