Southern Charm

Great Ex-Pectations

Season 8

Episode 1

Editor’s Rating

2 stars

**

Photo: Bravo

Doesn’t it feel like a billion years since we last watched Southern Charm, an antebellum sorority mixer at a plantation house? It’s been so long that I didn’t even remember John Pringle, a sexy character actor whose IMDb you have to pull up just to remember who he played on Ozark. It seems like not that much has changed down South, and certainly things haven’t changed with our cast of lovable dummies … and Kathryn, who is just a dummy.

First, we have to get reacquainted with the whole crew. Austen and Shep are still in the same bar, still drinking Trop Hop, and completely unaware that they are both too old to have no careers, no partners, and no children between them. If idle hands are the devil’s playthings, then Shep and Austen are Satan’s anal beads. Meanwhile, Summer House star Craig Conover has turned himself into a pillow magnate dressed like the shift manager at Best Buy. He’s actually doing well. He got all of the asbestos out of his house and half of his living room floor laid. In the old days he would have gotten half of the asbestos out and fully laid on the floor.

We only get a brief check-in with Patricia and Whitney, who is using vodka to disinfect the floor after he picks up all the dog poop. The sad news is that Michael, Patricia’s long-time and altogether charming butler, had a major stroke and is now paralyzed. Whitney is Patricia’s current servant and he’s about as good at it as Taylor Swift is at not writing about her exes.

This show’s Cruella de Ville, Madison LeCroy only makes a brief appearance and we don’t get much from her. The same goes for Pringle, but now that he’s popped, he won’t be able to stop. Newbies Leva and Venita are swanning around (and Venita is driving in a Land Rover whose headlamps flash like the floor of Dance Dance Revolution even in the middle of the day) but aren’t doing much other than serving lewks. They’re also hanging out with Craig’s ex Naomie, who is back after a 10-day move to New York where she found out that her fiancé was cheating on her and she scuttled back to South Carolina.

A lot of the story has to do with Craig and Naomie, who apparently hooked up a couple of times after she broke up with her ex and while Craig was dating fellow Summer House star Paige DeSorbo, but before they were exclusive. Is this why he was being so wishy-washy about being boyfriend/girlfriend with Paige on the in-all-ways-superior other Bravo show they star on?

There’s sadly not much drama between Craigy and Naom-Naom, as no one calls them. For the first time, Craig seems entirely over Naomie, and if she’s still pining away for Craig now that he’s gotten his life together, then she’s not really showing it. However, what’s up with them is certainly causing a rift between Craig and the other boys. Craig says that he hasn’t been answering Shep’s calls because Shep is busy with his girlfriend Taylor and because Shep always treats him like shit. Yes, this is the price of success. Before Craig just had to take all of Shep’s snide insults because he needed to stay on the show. Now he has a store, a girlfriend, and another show. He’s washed that condescension right out of his hair and sent it’s on its way. (I feel like South Pacific references and Southern Charm go together like my lips and that little spot right behind Tom Holland’s earlobe.)

Craig has also pulled away from Austen for a very good reason. He says that he was hanging out with Paige and Austen and Austen started squabbling with him. Then Austen blurts out, “Well, are you going to tell Paige that you slept with Naomie?” Apparently, Paige said, “I already know, and you’re some friend.” Sick burn!

The only problem with this story is that when the three boys sit down at Kathryn’s party, Austen says he didn’t know that they hooked up and Craig says he kept it a secret from him because he would tell everyone. Okay, so did Austen know about Naomie and say something in front of Paige, or did Craig hide the truth from him? Both of these things can’t be true. While Craig’s story about calling out Austen may not be factually true, I also believe that it is spiritually true. Like that is something that Austen would totally do, and, to be honest, Craig is better without the two walking beer bellies that have been holding him back.

While this is the fight among the boys, there is another fight brewing among the girls and it is all centered around Kathryn, who is looking more and more like a Kommunity Kollege Kardashian with each passing year. She’s still living with her boyfriend Chelb (pronounced “Caleb”), who we all thought she was only dating so that she wouldn’t look racist. Well, she made it last at least a whole season. (But no more, since they broke up after filming.)

Kathryn is throwing herself a Roaring ‘20s-themed 30th birthday party, which is dumb for at least two reasons. The first is this theme has been done more times than “Stay” was played on my CD player in 1998 when the first boy that I ever kissed moved to the school across town. The other reason is that she is entering her 30s with the 20s. It makes no sense, but about as much sense as calling it a Great Katsby party which made me want to retch up a hairball big enough that it could open its own cat café.

She decides that she is going to invite everyone to the party, including Venita, who hasn’t talked to Kathryn since calling out her racially insensitive behavior last season, and Naomie, who hasn’t talked to her since Kathryn spread a rumor about Cameran’s husband cheating on her that was so bad that Cameran quit the show. She says she wants to start this new decade with a clean slate for herself and everyone.

The problem is that Kathryn still has the maturity of Violet Beauregarde before she ate the Everlasting Gobstopper. When Naomie arrives at the party, she greets Kathryn warmly and moves on. Kathryn, however, expected her to say, “Thank you for inviting me. I’m so sorry for what happened. Let’s go have a talk.” That Kathryn expects an apology for maliciously spreading rumors about a castmate is all you really need to know about Kathryn. And why would Naomie do that? This party is not the place where they should talk. Kathryn should be busy with her other guests (though this party does seem oddly empty).

But Kathryn gets drunker and drunker and her Retinol makes her chin redder and redder. She pulls Chleb to complain that Venita and Naomie haven’t made eye contact with her since arriving. Um, of course they haven’t. She should be busy celebrating her birthday and they should be busy socializing. Yes, it’s her birthday party, but it’s still a party.

Kathryn then starts whining about how she wants to go home, probably because she’s not getting enough attention in a room of people she has alienated by behaving like an ass over the last eight seasons. Well, that’s not entirely true. She spent several seasons being tortured by Thomas, then a couple of seasons gaining our sympathy when we realized she was the victim of his emotional abuse, and then a few seasons being free of Thomas and just terrible. Still, you get what I’m saying.

On her way out, Kathryn stops by Naomie’s table to say that Naomie should be ashamed of how she treated Kathryn. Naomie says, “But you tried to ruin someone’s family.” Yes, she did. If anything, Kathryn should be the one who is ashamed. She uses this as an excuse to say that Naomie isn’t better than her when, objectively, I think that is a lie. Naomie tells her she doesn’t like the way she fights. When Kathryn asks which way that is, Naomie says, “Dirty.” No lies detected, and we got the polygraph expert who asked Lisa Vanderpump if she had anything to do with Puppygate.

Kathryn reacts by calling Naomie a “petty little bitch” and saying she is “fake.” As for fake, I think that Naomie kept it pretty one-hundo straight to Kathryn’s face and wouldn’t let her get away with her past actions. As for a petty little bitch, Kathryn is the one who is upset that Naomie wasn’t paying her enough attention at her party, so she attacked her. She is projecting more than whatever is powering the holograms at that new ABBA concert in London. Naomie does the smart thing and walks away as Kathryn jiggles herself into an elevator while screaming at her friends on the way down. Oh, it’s been far too long since we’ve last watched Southern Charm, but I also think it hasn’t quite been long enough.

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Originally Appeared Here

The increase in Coronavirus infections, as well as the presence of Monkeypox, has not affected reservations for the summer tourism season in Puerto Vallarta.

According to the director of the Public Trust for Tourism Advertising and Promotion of Puerto Vallarta, Luis Villaseñor Nolasco, there has been no impact on reservations for this month or for the summer.

“It has not generated any concern among the tourists who have booked, and that with this pandemic we have learned to be more informed, more educated, know a little more about the subject and, most importantly, take care of ourselves,” added the director of Fidetur.

So in the case of Covid-19 -he added- the rates remain low in the destination, “in the state too, which has been a leader in managing the pandemic, and since the issue of vaccination of minors is also advancing, it’s also going to come down to us having greater herd immunity in the city. And well, the issue of monkeypox, well, we have been hearing more from the health authorities, learning a little more about this virus, which is low-lethality and low-contagion,” he said.

The first case of monkeybox in Jalisco was reported in Puerto Vallarta by a male tourist visiting the city for gay pride from Texas. At least four additional cases have been linked to the tourist, who was diagnosed in Puerto Vallarta and fled the hospital when he was asked to quarantine, where he then flew home knowingly putting passengers at risk.

Villaseñor Nolasco highlighted that with the pandemic there has been greater awareness in the sector and they have learned to take better care of themselves, all this so as not to continue being affected by this and other viruses.

“Despite the fact that there have been some measures that have been eliminated, since the decision that has been made is to continue shielding destination personnel, using face masks, disinfecting areas to create healthy spaces for both employees and visitors, and that will help us stop any contagion,” he stressed.

Since the Covid-19 pandemic began, Puerto Vallarta immediately implemented biosecurity measures, which it has continued to maintain in order not to continue to be affected by closures or capacity cuts in hotels and restaurants.

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• Monkeybox cases in Puerto Vallarta have not affected tourism The increase in Coronavirus infections, as well as the presence of Monkeypox, has not affected reservations for the summer tourism season in Puerto Vallarta. According to the director of the Public Trust for Tourism Advertising and Promotion of Puerto Vallarta, Luis Villaseñor Nolasco, there has been no impact on reservations for this month or for…

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Xichen Yang via the Seminole County Sheriff’s Office.

A 21-year-old Florida man is behind bars after he allegedly admitted to slitting his wife’s throat and dragging her into a bathtub, before playing her favorite music and holding her hand while she bled out.

Xichen Yang was taken into custody and charged with one count each of first-degree premeditated murder and destroying, altering, or removing evidence in the death of Nhu Quynh Pham, court records reviewed by Law&Crime show.

According to an arrest report filed in Seminole County, officers with the Altamonte Springs Police Department at approximately 8:49 a.m. on June 21 responded to a call for a wellness check on an adult female at a home located in the 900 block of Ballard Street. The caller, identified in the complaint as Michael Rathel, told the 911 dispatcher that the woman’s husband claimed he had just killed his wife.

“Yang called Rathel’s son, Michael Cole Rathel, and informed him he had stabbed his wife, killing her, and was attempting to clean up the evidence,” the elder Rathel allegedly told the dispatcher.

Upon arriving at the scene, first responders entered the home and “immediately” found Pham, who was “lying in a pool of blood in a bathtub located in the bathroom directly to the right of the front entrance to the apartment,” per the complaint. Police say she sustained a “deep laceration to the left side of her neck” and her stomach had “pooled with blood.” She was pronounced dead at approximately 9:13 a.m.

Officers allegedly recovered rubber gloves and disinfectant from the hallway leading to the bathroom.

Yang was taken into custody a short while later and allegedly confessed to his wife’s murder in great detail.

“Yang admitted to cutting Pham with a knife. After cutting Pham with the knife, Pham began ‘crawling down the hall’ towards the door. Yang then took her to the bathroom,” the complaint states. “He placed Pham in the bathroom tub, ‘played her favorite music,’ and ‘held her hand’ for what he estimates to be approximately 10 minutes, until she died. Yang said he did not call an ambulance for Pham while she was dying. After Pham died, Yang began to clean up the blood on the walls and floor.”

In a sworn statement, Rathel, Yang’s boss at Marco Polo Pool Maintenance, told investigators that he called Yang at approximately 8:26 a.m. to see why he hadn’t shown up for work. Yang allegedly told Rathel that he was angry at his wife because she “burned his passport.” As Rathel was castigating Yang for being irresponsible, Yang allegedly told his boss he had “actually done ‘unspeakable’ things and that he killed his wife.” He further explained that “he used a knife on Pham’s throat,” per the complaint.

Yang allegedly admitted to police that he knew he was getting too angry and could have “stopped short” of killing Pham, but chose not to.

“When asked why he did not stop himself, Yang explained that was ‘not how he was raised’ and that he is the type of person who always ‘goes all the way,’” the complaint states.

Yang is currently in the custody of Seminole County Corrections deputies awaiting medical clearance before being transported to jail, police said in a press release. He is scheduled to appear before a judge at 2 p.m. on Thursday.

Read the arrest report below:

[image via Seminole County Sheriff’s Office]

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Denver area residents can now take advantage of the efficient cleaning from Roochii cleaning. The company has expanded its service area to include Denver.

Roochii Cleaning is pleased to announce that the company now offers its cleaning service in Denver and the surrounding area. The company mainly focuses on residential cleaning clients. The business was launched in 2017 and has expanded its services to include a variety of cleaning tasks in and around the Denver area. The company previously operated out of Brighton, Colorado, and received hundreds of positive reviews from customers there. 

There are various reasons why hiring a professional cleaning crew makes a lot of sense. More people today have made the transition from office jobs to working remotely from home. When Covid-19 forced many people to spend time at home, working, or studying, it often caused the house to look less put-together. The restrictions from more people cramped up and busy in the home causes more work to keep it clean, with no more time to do the job personally. There is just no time to stay abreast of the upkeep of a full family and daily chores.

Additional details are available at https://roochiicleaning.com/denver-cleaning/

With a newborn infant in the house, there is less time to keep up with the house cleaning chores. New parents learn quickly how much time an infant requires. It is even more important to keep the home free of pathogens, viruses, and germs with a new baby. There just isn’t enough time to think about cleaning.  Denver Cleaning by Roochii offers non-toxic disinfecting products and procedures to protect the entire family from disease and germs. 

Hiring a house cleaning Denver professional means the customer can focus on what they do best without needing to stop and take care of the routine cleaning chores. Enjoying a clean house or apartment is excellent for feeling that there is time to relax. There are not enough hours in the day to spend time on routine cleaning tasks and missing out on the fun parts of life. 

About the Company: 

Roochii Cleaning has moved to a new location in Denver. The previous location has hundreds of positive reviews. The same great quality of work applies.

Media Contact
Company Name: Roochii Cleaning
Contact Person: Jovany Miranda
Email: Send Email
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Country: United States
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You can help your children develop healthy habits early in life that will bring lifelong benefits. Because your children look up to you, you should set them a good example.

At the same time, helping your children live their best lives will undoubtedly make you think twice about some of your own habits, which could perhaps do with some redress and cure.

Attitude

A positive attitude will contribute to your well-being throughout life and help your children become more resilient. Help your children develop positive attitudes by encouraging them to do what they can instead of always telling them what they can’t.

Make a point of celebrating their successes, but don’t make them feel they are only good enough if they are top of the class or play for the first team. Most people can be perfectly contented and well-adjusted with average effort and results.

Screen time

Modern children are often exposed to digital media from computers, play stations, smartphones, tablets and television throughout the day. The problem is that too much digital media results in a sedentary lifestyle and critical social interactions are not learnt. Also, children who spend the majority of their time in front of a screen don’t get into the habit of regular exercise and many experience difficulty sleeping.

You can teach them to use screen time in a healthy way that can improve their lives. Limit the time they spend on digital media and instead substitute it with other activities.

• Reading with your children every day from babyhood helps connections form in their young brains. These build language, literacy and social-emotional skills essential in childhood development.
• Introduce your children to a range of physical activities – from swimming to hiking and ball sports like tennis and lawn cricket – and enjoy them together as a family. Not all children like the same activities, but you are sure to find some most will enjoy.
• If you have trouble motivating them, try simple toys like skipping ropes or inflatable beach balls, and choose different locations so that they don’t get bored with the backyard. Public parks and playgrounds, sports fields and swimming pools or the beach are good options.

Food

Filling their plates with brightly coloured foods translates into a high nutritional value with many health benefits – especially when the foods are in season. Start early with vegetables and fruits, brimming with vitamins, minerals and other nutrients. Avoid sugar-laden fruit and vegetable juices and soft drinks.

Eating a balanced breakfast with protein, carbohydrates, and fats is a good way for your children and you to start the day. Instead of opening a box of sugar-coated breakfast cereal, try the following:

• Muesli or granola with double-cream yoghurt and sliced banana.
• Hard-boiled eggs, toast and an apple.
• Peanut butter, honey and cheese on whole-grain bread or toast.

Teach your child about nutrition by encouraging them to read the food labels on their favourite packaged snacks. Focus on the amount of sugar, saturated fat, energy (kilojoules) and serving size. Food labels have the ingredients listed in descending order by amount. So, for instance, if sugar is the first ingredient listed, the snack contains more sugar than any other ingredient.

Money

Teach your children the importance of managing their money, starting with the idea of earning their own money rather than just giving to them. For example, instead of handing out money for doing nothing, you should pay them for the chores done around the house like cleaning their rooms, washing dishes, setting the table or mowing the lawn.

Once they are familiar with earning money, you can teach them how to save, share and spend wisely.

Consistency

The key to helping children adopt healthy habits is consistency in what you say and do, and it’s important for them to see that you follow your own advice. Children tend to copy what you do, so if it’s evident to them that you care about your health, they’re likely to follow your example.

It’s up to you to teach your children the habits they need to live happy, healthy lives. Some of these can last a lifetime.

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For decades, the pace of creativity—generation of novel and useful ideas—in health care delivery organizations (for example, hospitals and medical groups) has been slow. Additionally, despite the industry bringing us innovative ideas such as precision medicine and big-data analytics, many promising ideas within health care delivery organizations have stalled amid resistance to change and organizational constraints.

Then came the COVID-19 pandemic: As organizations, their leaders, and their staff heroically stepped up to care for patients in unprecedented circumstances, creativity overflowed. Creative innovations and implementation strategies related to care delivery, operations and supply chain management, vaccine distribution, and other areas have saved lives, improved delivery and financing of care, and addressed critical challenges related to capacity, equipment, workforce, and vaccine shortages. Health care became an exemplar creative industry quickly.

Lessons Learned

We highlight four key lessons to be remembered as the industry moves forward. We also identify organizational actions and policy levers that are needed to support ongoing, post-pandemic creativity to address the formidable challenges that existed before Covid-19 and persist now, such as low-value care and inequity.

Lesson 1: The Health Care Workforce Is A Ready Source Of Creative Ideas

During the pandemic, the common image of a creator as entrepreneur or artist was expanded to include professionals on the front lines of the COVID-19 response. We saw critical care doctors and nurses creatively re-purpose split-respirators, baby monitors, snorkels, and hairdryer hoods for COVID-19 care; supply chain supervisors contact laundromats and hardware stores to help maintain personal protective equipment; and environmental services managers experiment with sanitizer placement and clever signage. As vaccine distribution faced challenges, public health workers turned closed Sears stores into vaccine centers.

The creativity on display across the spectrum of health care delivery revealed the readiness of health care and public health workers to generate, share, and implement creative ideas for improvement in routine work in response to large-scale crises—as they frequently do in the regular course of work without recognition. In both situations, their ideas can be highly effective. Health care and public health workers have deep knowledge of how their fields work; their expertise positions them to understand the sources of problems and often see creative opportunities to address and effectively implement solutions. Research shows that the more problematic or frustrating the situation, the more creative front-line workers become, with clear benefits for the patient experience.

Lesson 2: Creativity And Standardization Are Complements, Not Antagonists

Prior to COVID-19, creativity was often described as contradictory to health systems’ goal of evidence-based standardized care on the theory that creativity introduces variance whereas standardization seeks to reduce variance. COVID-19 showed, however, that these “contradictory” processes can be complementary and thus managed jointly. Creativity supports the identification of innovations worth standardizing. Clear surgical masks to facilitate lip-reading and family inclusion in palliative care virtual discussions have become standard practice in some organizations, for example.

Symbiotically, standardization enables creativity by providing a baseline for focus and revision. An example occurred when COVID-19 challenged delivery of the evidence-based ICU Liberation “A to F” bundle, for reducing pain and delirium. Hospitals maintained best practices in interprofessional teamwork and pain assessment yet creatively adapted the bundle by integrating virtual round participation, reimagining in-room presence to two-person teams, and adding just-in-time training for redeployed clinicians.

COVID-19 showed that administrative systems that support flexibility via parallel and intersecting processes are essential and possible for dual management of standardization and creativity. At the Mayo Clinic, they achieve this through committee design. There, a large committee of leaders convenes to review standardized safety protocols for routine matters, a slow, reflective, and consensus-focused process. A subset convenes to brainstorm and enact solutions to emergent crises in 15-minute daily calls. The full committee and the subset come together and apart as needed, an approach likely possible for other organizations.

Lesson 3: Implementation Of Creative Ideas Can Be Fast And Effective

It is reported that evidence-based medical practices, which often start as creative ideas, take 17 years to be incorporated into routine practice. Telemedicine—a creative, evidence-based practice of electronic and telecommunications technologies used to provide care at a distance—appeared to be on this path until COVID-19. After a decade of slow uptake, virtual visits rose 150 percent in a month during the pandemic, with organizations such as Emory Healthcare scaling their programs within eight weeks. Similar rapid implementation occurred for other creative ideas that had been marginalized, such as integration of behavioral health services into primary care, which have streamlined previously siloed care delivery processes.

Through these examples and others, COVID-19 demonstrated that implementation of creative ideas can be swift and improve the efficiency and effectiveness of care. This lesson is embodied in programs such as Stanford Health Care’s “52 and 52,” in which staff execute improvement ideas in two to eight weeks. Such programs and the overall response to COVID-19 showed that organizations and staff will mobilize when a compelling case is made, to the benefit of patients, workers, and organizations.

Lesson 4: Creativity Benefits From Collaborations With Diverse Stakeholders

During the pandemic, creativity was frequently used to build supportive networks and systems to care for vulnerable communities, enhancing commitment and effort to address local needs. Public-private partnerships among community health workers, organizers, and governments fueled the success of pop-up events and mobile vans to deliver COVID-19 testing and vaccine services to Black, Latinx, and underrepresented populations. Likewise, such partnerships facilitated home health services through mobile vans, sometimes with novel features such as rapid responders such as EMTs or paramedics to assist older adults with telehealth visits at home. In most industries, creativity powers the development of commercial outcomes such as new products and is a means to competitive advantage. During COVID-19, creative partnerships were used to effectively care for communities instead, addressing a combination of physical and social determinants of health.

Operationalizing Lessons Through Policy And Management

Together, these four lessons indicate the potential and feasibility of leveraging creativity for improvements. Doing so requires actions by organizations and policy makers. Organizations must take at least four steps.

Invite Creativity

First, organizations should invite the creativity of front-line workers by soliciting their participation and emphasizing their creative potential. Existing routines, such as daily huddles or rounds, may be enhanced or repurposed to integrate creativity. Intermountain Healthcare, for example, uses daily tiered escalation huddles as a process to carry forward improvement ideas from the front lines of care to senior leadership. Critical patient care information, including new ideas and suggestions, are escalated from initial front-line discussions to senior leadership in a series of time-staggered huddles. Routinizing idea generation in daily work processes normalizes creativity at work and increases the steady flow of staff-generated insights and knowledge to decision makers.

Special events to source creative ideas from the workforce as a collective can also energize organizations with the knowledge and motivation to make change. University of Pennsylvania Healthcare, for example, has used innovation tournaments to identify new programs to improve patient care experiences and care coordination. Inviting the workforce to participate in creative problem-solving can enrich senior leader-led decision making with new ideas that yield better long-term performance.

Support Creativity By Providing Resources

Providing support for creativity and use of elicitation tactics such as team brainstorming and reflection promotes a climate that encourages learning from success and failure. Cleveland Clinic, for example, provides resources to aid the adoption and spread of promising creative ideas through tools such as the “Invention Disclosure Form,” which staff can use to submit ideas to Cleveland Clinic Innovations, its commercialization arm. Creative ideas that emerged in response to the pandemic, such as new mask prototypes or ways to make public transit safer, had a chance to rapidly scale to provide protection to the workforce, patients, and community members.

Leaders should consider resources and tactics that signal to those in the organization that staff-led ideas are valued and have a pathway to being implemented and scaled. Research conducted on creativity in community health centers has found that brainstorming for creative ideas at the start of each improvement team meeting, coupled with reflecting on team functioning at the end of each meeting, is associated with staff generating more creative ideas. These processes are resources for creativity, and notably they are not expensive.

Creativity And Standardization

Organizations should design systems that allow iteration and complementarity between creativity and standardization. Structured process improvement strategies such as plan-do-study-act cycles and Lean management can be used to identify creative practices worth standardizing. They can also be used to invite and manage creativity by structuring the integration of creativity within standardized systems. Although these approaches are often narrowly viewed as a means of reducing waste and embedding standardization, they also involve gaining an understanding of emergent problems and providing real-time solutions, which benefit from and often require creativity.

Kaizen, or continuous improvement, lies at the core of Lean. Tools such as Kaizen boards enable employees to propose and iterate on ideas for improvement as part of a structured change process. The boards provide a reliable infrastructure for creative ideas to journey from idea generation to evaluation to implementation and can be designed to allow for alternating processes of experimentation and routinization. Paradoxically, these mechanisms that promote efficiency can also foster more flexible and adaptive processes by identifying and cultivating ideas worth spreading as innovations.

Reward Creativity

Organizations should reward creativity with recognition and evidence of impact. Managerial research has found that even dissatisfied clinicians and staff willingly generate creative ideas, given opportunity and support. The impacts of rewards and recognition on engagement, especially during times of increased stressors and burnout, are increasingly recognized. Cleveland Clinic’s Caregiver Celebrations explicitly recognize behavior that “welcomes change, encourages invention, and continually seeks better, more efficient ways to achieve goals.”

Rewarding creativity ensures that it is valued. Rewards can be both monetary or non-monetary, as long as the program and award recipients themselves are highly publicized.

Policy makers must support creativity as well. We offer four ways they can do this.

Promoting Creativity Through Incentive Programs

First, incentive programs such as value-based purchasing must continue; these programs encourage organizational creativity to achieve performance-reimbursement goals. For example, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services’ (CMS’s) Merit-based Incentive Payment System (MIPS) rewards clinicians and groups with a 15 percent payment for improvement activities. These activities, such as process improvements for care transitions and responses to patient experience data, frequently spur innovation through the creative efforts of clinicians and their teams as they push the boundaries of health care and require new types of expertise and work patterns.

Future reforms of MIPS and other pay-for-performance programs (for example, accountable care organizations) should be explicit about the organizational support required for creativity; they should include support for more resources and time devoted to staff-led improvement activities that involve new ideas. This support would be particularly impactful for underresourced practices that serve complex and underserved patients who require more customized, patient-centered care, as these practices need creativity to “do more with less.”

Updating Regulations

Second, local- and state-level regulations must be periodically reviewed and updated to ensure they do not stifle creativity. For example, a key facilitator of telehealth’s rapid implementation was changes to laws that removed delivery and reimbursement barriers to adoption. CMS’s changes to its Physician Fee Schedule to expand telehealth and other telecommunications technologies allow the demonstrated positive impact of the telehealth innovation to continue. Existing funding programs and regulations should also be updated to ensure they can integrate the most promising creative ideas such as mobile clinic programs, which could fit into existing case management models proposed in the national COVID-19 surveillance system but will also require federal reimbursement models to be enhanced to cover necessary community-based resources.

Continuing Challenge Grants

Third, rapid-response and grand challenge-style funding that operated during peak COVID-19 emergency periods should be retained for another purpose: to reimagine health care systems. Rapid-response grants from federal agencies such as the Agency For Healthcare Research and Quality and the CMS Innovation Center stimulated timely, creative, and cutting-edge research to address gaps in care delivery revealed by the pandemic. The infrastructure of such award mechanisms, including reducing the need for pilot data and shortening review cycles, facilitated pioneering research that may not have survived traditional award procedures. Countries such as Canada also introduced special awards to support research focused on solving especially difficult “big questions” facing societies, thereby nurturing important creative ideas that typical funding outlets may miss. These sorts of challenge grants should be continued so that the creativity they unleash can continue to improve health care systems.

Cross-Industry Collaboration

Finally, the health care and public health must collaborate with the other industries. Evidence suggests that meeting community health needs requires creative networks and partnerships, within and across industries. For example, the Clorox Alliance provided disinfecting products and used public health best practices from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Foundation to guide United Airlines, Uber, and AMC Theatres in bringing back their services safely; the Alliance also provided grants to hospitals to support research on safety and cleaning best practices for COVID-19 patient care. Non-health care organizations are eager and well-positioned to provide insight and resources: Furloughed airline workers used their customer service skills to provide lounges for exhausted health care workers; Hewlett Packard donated 3-D printers to create personal protective equipment; and Formula 1 and London Hospital partnered to develop a respiratory device design for mass production, to cite just a few examples.

Self-reliance is unlikely to generate the creative ideas and implementation required to address the big, remaining issues in health care. While COVID-19 brought much devastation, it also showed the power of creativity and creative potential of the industry to address serious problems. That lesson is something that should not be lost.

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Originally Appeared Here

Hello, hello! Kristen here with your Thursday edition of the Dunedin Daily, filled with the top community information you need to know right now. Keep scrolling to get the scoop…

📣 Our readers love to celebrate good news! You can now shout out your big announcement at the top of the Dunedin Daily newsletter. Whether it’s a grand opening, new product for sale, birthday, anniversary, engagement, wedding or new baby, let everyone celebrate alongside you! Submit your announcement here.

First, today’s weather:

Partly sunny and humid. High: 91 Low: 84.

Our local sponsors have some great stuff to offer:

• Is mold in your home making you sick? If so, you need to call The Mold Girl. Owner Liz Keefer is a local Council-Certified Indoor Environmental Consultant with over 12 years of experience providing mold testing services. She will thoroughly assess your home for visible or hidden mold issues and create a comprehensive remediation & prevention plan to restore your indoor air quality. Call Liz at (727) 205-6020 to schedule your inspection for only $575 and mention Patch for $50 off.
• Want to support local artists in Dunedin? Studio 1212 Art Gallery at 234 Monroe St. in Dunedin is a non-profit art gallery managed by award-winning local artists from our area. The gallery features original artwork, prints and cards and has a popular boutique of hand-crafted gift items. Hours are 11am – 3pm Wednesday to Sunday or visit studio1212.org to shop and to see exhibition schedules. And to support local artists by becoming a Patron of Studio 1212, go here.
• Attention “Dogedin” dog parents — If you wouldn’t eat it, why feed it to your dog? Lucky Dog Cuisine pioneered cooked human grade food for dogs 14 years ago, using meticulously sourced local ingredients cooked fresh, frozen and delivered from their kitchen to yours. No preservatives, no fillers — ever. Only grass-fed meats, wild caught fish, GMO-free fruits and veggies. Dunedin Daily readers get a free bag of cookies with your order when you mention Patch. Visit Lucky Dog Cuisine to learn more.

Want to see your business featured in this spot? Click here to get started.

Here are the top three stories in Dunedin today:

1. A new Dunedin record store is using music to bring people together. D&J Records not only offers classic albums to browse through, but it’s also a place where musicians can go to jam together and music-lovers can hang out. Owners Daniela Smyth and Jody Dale have created nostalgic a vibe that brings visitors back to the ’70s, while also providing the youngins with Instagram-worthy decor. “We want this to be a place where people from the community can gather,” Smyth told Tampa Bay Newspapers. “We hope all of our customers become friends.” (Tampa Bay Newspapers)
2. Twelve kittens that were abandoned in a Dunedin park were later rescued by Pinellas County Sheriff’s Office deputies. They were found in a carrier and reported to the authorities. The kittens are four or five weeks old and currently living in foster homes. They will be put up for adoption through Suncoast Animal League when they reach 12 weeks old and pass a specified medical program. Contact Suncoast Animal League if you’re interested in adopting one of these adorable kittens! (Dunedin Patch | Suncoast Animal League)
3. Pinellas County is upgrading its 9-1-1 system to The PRIME or the Pinellas Regional Information Management Enterprise system. Currently, when you call 9-1-1 and an operator gets your information, it’s shared with emergency responders in the area of the emergency. With the new system, all law enforcement agencies in Pinellas County will get access to that information, improving response times. It will also allow police officers to see where other responding officers are located, despite what city they work in. “This will help with officer safety, public safety, crime solvability, access to information,” Sheriff Bob Gualtieri told ABC Action News. “When you put all of that together in one place there is nothing but an absolute win for everybody.” The system is expected to be up and running in 18 months. (ABC Action News Tampa Bay)

Dunedin Daily Pic of the Day:

Taken on St. Joseph Sound across from the Fenway Hotel | Submitted by John Wilk

Thank you John Wilk for submitting your photo taken on St. Joseph Sound!

Want to see your Dunedin photo here? Submit it to [email protected] for consideration! Please confirm in the email that you own the rights to the photo, and that Patch has permission to republish it.

Today in Dunedin:

• Breast Ultrasound Screening by HerScan (9 a.m.)
• Pop Up Picnic in the Park Couple Date Night at Weaver Park (10 a.m.)
• Plastic Free Shampoo Making Workshop at Jade Soap Shop (6:30 p.m.)
• Bradenton Marauders vs. Dunedin Blue Jays at TD Ballpark (6:30 p.m.)
• Thursday Painting Party at HoB Brewing Co. (7 p.m.)

From my notebook:

• If you have pets, do you know what you would do with them during a hurricane? The City of Dunedin recommends you prepare for the worst by assembling an animal emergency supply kit and developing a pet care buddy system. Not all shelters accept pets, so be sure to make plans in advance for your pets! Learn more about what you can do on the county’s website. (City of Dunedin via Facebook | Pinellas County)
• A new special is available at Mangos and Marley! Stop by and try the nachos made with chicken, black beans and cheese, topped with fresh pico, roasted jalapeños, avocado ranch and jerk bbq. Yum! (Mangos and Marley via Facebook)
• The City of Dunedin has shared a special video of their Juneteenth Employee In-Service Day & Community Event. Over 400 city employees participated in different community service activities including volunteering for Dunedin Cares and collecting more than 200 pounds of trash. Check out the video on the city’s Facebook page! (City of Dunedin via Facebook)
• Pisces Sushi has partnered with TüKrō Coffee to create a delicious new caffeinated dessert. Stop by Pisces Shushi to try the Mocha Latte Panna Cotta, made with fresh espresso! (Pisces Sushi via Facebook)
• MCM Staffing is hiring hospital housekeepers in Dunedin! Applicants should be comfortable working in a hospital setting and will be responsible for cleaning and disinfecting patient rooms, discharge rooms, common areas, hospital operational rooms and other spaces inside the hospital. Pay is $14.25 per hour. Those interested can apply at the link! (MCM via Facebook)
• Check out these animal paintings by local artist Essie Bergen! There’s no news here other than the fact that I find her work adorable. Who can resist a painting depicting a donkey in cat-eye glasses? (Essie Bergen Artwork via Facebook)

Supply chain shortages haven’t drained demand for pool installations and renovations.