Assistant Vice President, Patient Safety, Carolinas HealthCare System

Ms. Drapievsky leads patient safety operations across acute care and post acute care locations.  She joined CHS in 2000 and has over 27 years of health care experience in multiple roles including nursing administration, informatics, and quality. Her area of expertise is patient safety performance improvement. She is the leader of the CHS Patient Safety Quality & Safety Operations Council (QSOC™) which has responsibility for the system goals for Falls, Healthcare Acquired Conditions, Patient Safety Indicators and Culture of Safety. Ms. Drapievsky is an administrator of the CHS Patient Safety Organizations listed with the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ.)  She is a TeamSTEPPS Master Trainer and has led the implementation of TeamSTEPPS, a healthcare teamwork initiative, across Carolinas HealthCare System’s 35+ acute care facilities.  Ms. Drapievsky is designated as a Patient Safety Officer having completed the Institute for Healthcare Improvement (IHI) Patient Safety Officer Executive Development program as well as several Advanced Patient Safety courses.

Jeffrey G. Soper is a “seasoned corporate warrior” with more than 40 years of work experience in industry, consulting and academe spanning a variety of industries and functional areas. In academe, Dr. Soper has served as Program Director and Assistant Professor of Engineering Leadership at The Pennsylvania State University; and as Associate Professor of Management and Associate Director of the TECO Center for Leadership at the University of Tampa; and as the Senior Research Fellow at the Human Resource Institute; and as an Adjunct Professor at S.P. Jain Center for Management in Dubai and Singapore.

As a consultant, Jeff been actively engaged in diagnosing, developing, implementing, and evaluating strategy and solutions for organizations experiencing performance challenges. Sample previous engagements include the development and implementation of an organizational leadership competency model and associated leadership development program for NASA; the development and implementation of a creativity and innovation program for PPG; and the development of a knowledge management and resultant multimedia training program for Osram-Sylvania. Sample international engagements include the development and implementation of a comprehensive integrated documentation and multimedia training programs for a power generation facility in Dubai; and the development and conduct of a four week professional development program covering the full spectrum of Human Resource Management/Development in support of localization initiatives for 22 multi-national organizations conducted multiple times in multiple locations in the People’s Republic of China.

Dr. Soper earned a Bachelor of Science degree in Technology and Management from the University of Maryland University College, a Master of Business Administration degree from Columbia University, and a Doctorate degree from The Pennsylvania State University specializing in Workforce Learning and Development (HRD). Additionally, he has completed all of the coursework and submitted the thesis to complete a Master of Science in Organization Development degree from Pepperdine University. In addition, Dr. Soper is a professionally certified member of the Society of Human Resource Management (SHRM), the Human Capital Institute (HCI), and the International Society for Performance Improvement (ISPI). Dr. Soper is a certified Business, Executive and Leadership Coach and a Master Certified Coach Trainer for these areas.

Reflecting his research and work efforts, Jeff has facilitated numerous professional and management development programs in a wide range of topics ranging from leadership development, ethics, and change management to creativity, innovation and organization development. He designed the research and co-authored the occupational competency study ASTD Models for Workplace Learning and Development and has been involved in research, professional development and speaking engagements on an international scale. Additionally, he is the creator of Problem Solving Leadership^TM and the C.L.I.C.K^TM Process, and co-authored Effective Expert Witnessing: Practices for the 21st Century – the bestselling book in the field.

Assistant Vice-President - Performance Excellence Center (PEC), Carolinas HealthCare System

Operations Management:  Over twenty-five years of business management and process engineering experience including direct management and supervision of diverse work forces in union and non-union environments.

Change Management:  Certified Lean Six Sigma Master Black Belt with a proven track record of success in culture changing performance improvement initiatives.

Organizational Development:  Experience in training and consulting diverse groups ranging from corporate executives to operations associates.

VP Innovation, Carolinas Health Care System

Dr. Wright is the VP of Innovation for CHS.  Prior to this role, she was CMO for CMC-NorthEast in Concord, NC.  During that time their medical staff recognized an ongoing problem related to undetected sleep apnea and respiratory failure in hospitalized patients.  They began a search to find ways to detect and prevent these complications.  At the same time, Dr. Wright was the PI for the $15.9 Million dollar federal grant on the use of Health IT to improve population health.  This is one of the 17 BEACON community grants awarded by the Office of the National Coordinator of Health IT.

Using the identified problem of undetected respiratory failure, and the potential for federal grant funding, her team identified a potential solution using Patient Safety Net from Masimo.  They have now installed PSN into 177 acute care beds at CMCNE, and have begun to see the fruits of their labor.  When patients begin to deteriorate, the alarm is sounded, and goes directly to the bedside nursing phone.  This is an actionable alert that tells the nurse the nature and magnitude of the problem.  This has increased the safety of the inpatients, and caused the nurses to identify patients before their problem leads to respiratory arrest, cardiac arrest, or an unplanned transfer to the ICU.

Prior to her time at CHS, Dr. Wright was a practicing Pediatric Anesthesiology and Intensivist for Emory University, (Childrens Healthcare of Atlanta), and Mercer School of Medicine (Memorial Health in Savannah).

Joe Dager is president of Business901, a firm specializing in bringing the continuous improvement process to the sales and marketing arena. He takes his process thinking of over thirty years in marketing within a wide variety of industries and applies it through Lean Marketing Concepts. Joe put himself through college utilizing the GI Bill, the result of being a member of the 82nd Airborne Division, and as a welder at Asphalt Drum Mixers. This hands-on approach and an education in both in Electrical and Mechanical Engineering has served him well becoming President of that company and later leaving to own a Marketing Agency, re-start Burke Heating Systems and Asphalt Machinery Corporation. He has over 30 years in the process equipment field and still regularly consults in that area.

Joe is a Lean Six Sigma Black Belt and has participated with companies involved in retail, manufacturing, software and professional services along their Quality Journey. In these companies, Joe developed and implemented sales and marketing strategies. Always being a process thinker, he attached Lean to the way of implementing sales and marketing and has advanced those practices through Design Thinking and Service Design concepts. The Business901 Blog and Podcast include many leading edge thinkers and been featured numerous times for its contributions to the Bloomberg’s Business Week Exchange. Joe has authored four books with the most recent, The Lean Engagement Team.

VP/CMO CMC-Pineville, Carolinas HealthCare System

Bob’s ultimate goal is to help your organization learn to improve your work system and processes faster than your competition. He helps people identify and remove barriers that prevent organizational performance excellence.

A talented facilitator, Bob takes participants through a fun and engaging improvement process that rapidly delivers significant bottom line results. By opening spaces for people to innovate, pent up creative energy is unleashed quickly, and changes which normally take months literally happen overnight!

Bob Petruska has hands-on experience in the aerospace, health care, food, and automotive industries. He holds a Bachelors of Science degree in Industrial Technology, and a Master of Science degree in Manufacturing Systems. Bob is an American Society for Quality (ASQ) Certified Six Sigma Black Belt. He is also the author of “Gemba Walks for Service Excellence, The Step-by-Step Guide for Identifying Service Delighters” published by CRC Press in August 2012.

Whether it’s improving top line growth through re-designing customers’ experience, or building a culture of performance excellence by engaging the heads, hearts, and hands of your employees, selecting the right approach for your unique situation is an important decision. The most rewarding work Bob does is to help clients overcome barriers that stand in their way of fully engaging employees.

Bob presented Gemba Walks for Positive Leadership internationally in front an audience of over 1,200 people in 2012. Bob presented The Pizza Game VSM Simulation at the 2009 ASQ Lean Six Sigma Conference, Service Excellence in Action: Applying Real World Examples at the 2011 ASQ Lean and Six Sigma Conference, Sustaining Lean – Ensure your effort is not the next flavor of the month at 2012 ASQ LSS Conference, and presented Gemba Walks for Service Excellence: Real-world Examples at the ASQ World Conference on Quality and Improvement in May 2012.

Customer Testimonials:

• “Bob’s facilitation skills are great! He made us work through the issues, and knows when to step in with enthusiasm and passion for improvements.”
• “Bob helped by asking questions until we came up with a better way.”
• “Bob made the principles easy to grasp, and coached us through getting stuck.”
• “Bob makes things come to life! He is full of energy, very knowledgeable and smart. I couldn’t have asked for a better teacher.”
• “My expectation was totally different, and I thought this was going to be hard. It was meaningful and fun!”