Dr. Jeanne Huddleston is the CEO and President of HB Healthcare Safety, SBC, a consulting and software company passionate about ending suffering caused by healthcare delivery.
HB Healthcare Safety is a Social Benefit Corporation actively pursuing an end to all pain and suffering caused by failures in care delivery through a combination of continuous organizational learning, case-based review rooted in systems engineering, and actionable insight technology.
HBHS works to bring together the expertise required to create continuous organizational learning rooted in data collection from case reviews, innovation, and improvement. Its focus is to use actionable data and information to stimulate meaningful cross-disciplinary and cross-departmental dialogue to cut through cultural and systemic barriers.
The Challenge
Jeanne M. Huddleston is an active U.S. Army Reserve wife, proud mother, and dedicated physician-engineer with over 20 years of experience in healthcare quality and safety.
She founded HBHS with Lacey Hart in 2015 through Mayo Clinic ventures. She reached out to BELAY when she was in the middle of hiring.
“I had just taken on my first full-time employee and was looking at bringing on a second,” Jeanne remembers. “I was learning quickly on multiple different levels, and I had started listening to Dave Ramsey's podcast as a source of education and as a faith-based organization.”
BELAY’s shared faith-based mission stood out to Jeanne.
“He mentioned BELAY,” Jeanne says. “I have tried to keep those around me in the faith-based space to help put right and left limits on everything we do as a source of accountability and just constant support for maintaining that vision when it becomes hard.
“I was tripping over myself and I needed someone with the strength to hold me accountable and the gentleness to do it in a way that I wouldn't be offended.
“[Being] a doctor, my leadership style until recently is command and control. I write an order and magic happens and the order gets carried out. There's no conversation, there's no warmup, there's no anything. I just write an order and it happens.”
When Jeanne’s leadership style was causing her to struggle with her first VA, she was able to transition to someone who fit better in the mold she was used to working in.
Enter BELAY Virtual Assistant Alyson Johnson.
The Solution
“Alyson slid right into that spot, and I was impressed with the way that BELAY did [the] matchmaking,” Jeanne said.
“When the first match didn't work, we would find a second. I had complete faith and confidence that BELAY was going to find me the right person, and I just needed to be patient with the process.”
Alyson jumped right into helping Jeanne with electronic filings, email and calendar management, creating to-do lists, and writing.
“She very quickly fell into the way I communicate in email,” Jeanne says. “The way I communicate verbally is very direct. [In] email, I try to soften it because it can come across so differently.
“I respond [to] every email with ‘sincere gratitude,’ ‘sincere appreciation,’ or ‘thank you for your patience.’ Generosity and grace are two of our core principles. I try to have that come out in my salutations, and [Alyson] fell into it immediately. I didn't coach, I didn't do anything. She just recognized it and did it.
“She has an amazing ability to anticipate which, if you ask my children, I sort of expect. [And] it's something that she has a skillset and an ability to do.
“She's communicating, in my world, with physician leaders across the country and has to have a tone of deference and respect. She has the discipline, deference, and respect that's hard to communicate in an email but is very evident in hers.
“She took my tone on very quickly in terms of confidence.”
And on the topic of confidence, that’s what Jeanne says her BELAY partnership provided.
“[I was] confident that eventually we would get the right person,” Jeanne adds. “If I was doing my hiring and had started with the first person—who I adored but we weren't the right team—I would've been stuck. I'm horrific at firing.”
“To be clear is kind. I struggle with that. And so having BELAY be there to help me with that matchmaking [was important because] I would've made a disaster of our HR and payroll, and it would've been a mess.
“The strength that BELAY has in that space has been important to me, has saved us money, has saved us a ton of time, and has found a beautiful match for us that's helping grow the company. And you can't put a value on that.”
The Result
“I'm not afraid to ask [Alyson] for help,” Jeanne says. “I'm not good at asking for help. I will [push] myself and do everything until I'm sick. I've never felt ashamed or inadequate when I ask her for help.
“When I say I'll do something and my plate's too full in the back of my head, I know I can't get it all done. She's [also] helped me improve my integrity by helping me get stuff done.
Jeanne has seen the value of having a BELAY Virtual Assistant on her team in a variety of ways.
“The value has come through time management, project management, enhanced communication, and idea generation,” Jeanne says. "We're a perfect pair as we're two puzzle pieces that fit well together; we're not alike.”
Meet the Specialist
ALYSON JOHNSON
Virtual Assistant