Meet the West Health Accelerator Team: Renee Tyska, RN, BSN
As clinical director at the West Health Institute, Renee Tyska collaborates closely with leaders of the West Health Accelerator at Mass General Brigham to ensure that their system-wide changes to improve care for older adults can be scaled and replicated across the country.
For almost two decades, West Health has been fueling innovative programs, practices and policies that help ensure successful aging and affordable healthcare for older adults and all Americans.
Q&A
Why was West Health interested in collaborating with Mass General Brigham?
Renee Tyska: When West Health identifies a model of care that’s truly working for older adults, we look for ways to help it go further. That’s exactly what we saw at Mass General Brigham – a program we admired from the start, one that simply needed a boost to reach more patients. We establish collaborative partnerships where we can bring a level of expertise in this work to help accelerate Mass General Brigham’s vision for the program. We knew that the program Dr. Zara Cooper and Dr. Rachelle Bernacki had established at Mass General Brigham was an efficient way of providing best-practice care for older adults, and we recognized that it could be a launching pad to something greater. At West Health, we are all about scaling models that are sustainable and that will drive large-scale impact. We believe we can build a clinical model to improve outcomes for our older patients through the West Health Accelerator at Mass General Brigham, and then deliver it more broadly across the country.
Why is an initiative like the West Health Accelerator at Mass General Brigham so important?
RT: Older adults make up 50% of the patient population at Mass General Brigham, and that is not unique — across the country, most healthcare systems have a large and growing older adult population. We are all facing an urgent need to respond to our older adult patients while also facing a clinical workforce shortage nationwide. It’s crucial that we find a way to move faster in healthcare to implement system-wide change that provides the best care for our patients while allowing clinicians to do their work more efficiently. Through our collaboration, the West Health Accelerator at Mass General Brigham, we are laying the groundwork for an important system-wide change for this patient population that can be scaled nationwide.
How will the Accelerator address these issues?
RT: The Accelerator is implementing change through a framework of four interconnected areas of focus that work together to improve care for older adults. The first area is creating a blueprint in Epic to hardwire care across the board for all patients ages 65 and older. The second area is focused on care delivery, ensuring there is a standard approach for evidence-based care that happens every time for every patient. Our third area of focus is on tracking interventions intentionally across the system, looking at specific patient populations. Finally, we have the West Health Champions program, which is the cultural catalyst for this work, ensuring that the momentum is continued and sustained.
We have a fantastic team of experts at Mass General Brigham coming together to identify best practices and hardwire them into the system to create a structure that will ensure these practices are consistent for all patients. Our framework is unique in how it operationalizes change, and we have realized that this is the mechanism that will enable rapid acceleration. It is a novel approach that I think other systems are going to learn from and benefit from.
What has it been like to partner with the Mass General Brigham team on this work?
RT: I’m really impressed by the entire team at Mass General Brigham. These are the right people to design the roadmap for other healthcare systems to follow. Dr. Bernacki and Dr. Cooper are fantastic leaders. They have really displayed true leadership skills by first and foremost being patient advocates, but they're also incredible champions of the clinical workforce. They understand how important it is to empower teams. That's why their West Health Champion program is something they're so proud of because it recognizes that the hard work begins with the folks at the bedside. They have also done a fantastic job of engaging leaders at all levels and recognizing the importance of stringing those dots together. They're showing how to break down silos in a system and really drive togetherness on shared outcomes and shared objectives.
What’s most exciting to you about the West Health Accelerator?
RT: My parents are in their 80s and have both had some health issues this year. So, I’ve seen firsthand the urgent need to move faster in healthcare to adopt clinical models that can be drivers to better outcomes for our older patients. What really stands out to me about the West Health Accelerator is to see how everyone at Mass General Brigham has moved so quickly to embrace this work — it’s unique and exciting. The system leaders at Mass General Brigham have really committed to improving care for their older adult population, and their entire population, through this work. This is not a siloed initiative. The Accelerator has aligned with other system-wide initiatives, so everyone within the health system is working towards the same goals in a way that’s coordinated and complementary. I know the outcome is going to be great, and I’m glad to be a part of it.