What does it look like to truly rewire healthcare culture from the inside out? At NorthBay Health, it looks like focusing on trust, ownership, and leadership at every level.
In a recent Healthcare Plus Podcast episode, Quint Studer spoke with two leaders from NorthBay: Dr. Heather Resseger, senior vice president, chief hospital operations officer, and chief nursing officer, and Jonna Taylor, recently promoted to director of acute care services.
The podcast explores how NorthBay helped shape a systemwide transformation built not on expensive consultants or trendy tactics but on values, clarity, and belief in people. The result? A team that’s thriving and delivering measurable gains in patient experience, safety, and engagement.
Here are some powerful takeaways and real-world strategies drawn from their conversation.
Values live in behaviors. Expect them; then inspect them. When Dr. Resseger describes the culture shift at NorthBay, she starts with a simple but powerful foundation: values that live in behaviors, not on a wall. To work on getting back to basics, NorthBay clarified true north values that serve as a daily compass—values built in partnership with frontline staff and physicians. Then they launched training for all staff focused on behaviors.
“Historically, you train people and then hope it sticks,” Resseger says, explaining their process as, “Let’s train people, but then let’s inspect what we expect and go out to see that staff are actually modeling those behaviors. It’s not about punishment, but it’s about building them, lifting them up, and reinforcing good behavior.”
Put one powerful question at the center of patient rounding. After hearing Quint Studer speak, Taylor immediately rewired how her department approached patient rounding. Instead of trying to match key drivers or looking at how data was trending, she had department leaders ask each patient one open-ended question: “What is your biggest worry or concern right now?” That shift sparked a 70-point leap in patient experience scores within one month.
“We stopped doing what we feel like should work, but isn’t working,” says Taylor. “We asked that one question, and we didn’t worry about visiting 44 patients. We were actually able to make authentic connections that people remembered when they took surveys about their experience.”
Make nurse rounding a collaborative skill-building exercise. NorthBay leaders don’t just round on patients. They round on nurse assignments—focusing on one nurse’s entire patient load, then debriefing with that nurse. The goal is skill-building, not box-checking. Taylor starts with kudos and personal connections, then collaborates with the nurse on areas of opportunity.
“They were a little nervous when I first introduced the concept, but now we’ve got nurses who are happy when I’ve selected their assignment,” says Taylor. “They’re happy about the debrief, and they’re proud of what they’ve been able to accomplish.”
Empower peer coaching to change safety culture. Facing a spike in patient-handling injuries, Taylor asked her team, “Who wants to figure this out with me?” The result was a peer-led safety committee. “It wasn’t just sitting around the table,” she says. “It was actually being part of the team.”
To “pass,” staff had to consistently demonstrate correct behaviors in real situations. Injuries dropped to zero. Taylor says this is because the team invested in and trained each other. “We’ve really developed a safety-first culture by putting the ownership on the team,” she said.
Make employee engagement everyone’s job. Last year, NorthBay’s nursing turnover rate was 9 percent, which is a lot better than the national average. Leaders credit this to a deep sense of belonging, shared decision-making, and visible leadership. “I think we are really good at going to the staff and asking them, ‘What do you want to do?’” says Resseger. “‘What do you need? How are things working?’” Daily huddles are led by staff, not managers. And employees are reminded why the mission and values matter.
Trust people to make decisions. Don’t override them. Many NorthBay leaders have grown from within. When Taylor started, she met with her team of eight supervisors, and one thing they expressed was that they felt like they had no power. “I told them that we can’t be successful if I’m the one person who makes decisions,” shares Taylor. “I need a team of people I can trust to make decisions. And so I gave them my immediate commitment, and that was, If you give a directive, I will not correct you in front of the team that reports to you. We will work on that together. So I will actually coach you. It’s never going to be me overriding something that you say.”
What the NorthBay story proves is this: You don’t need to be the biggest or most resourced to transform a culture. You need clarity, values, and trust. And you need leaders who are willing to rewire what’s not working and who believe deeply in the people closest to the work.
“In healthcare, you have to create this environment where people are okay not being perfect, okay sharing what concerns there are, okay being vulnerable,” says Studer. “And, NorthBay, that’s just what you’ve done.”
