Expertise for Successful Healthcare Solutions

Common Fire is an independent consulting and teaching practice that works in partnership with healthcare leaders – governing boards, administrative and clinical executives – to achieve their mission through outstanding results in clinical quality and safety. The results come from identifying adaptive systems and leadership actions required to achieve outcomes in the Value Star - clinical care, safety, patient and family experience, staff and provider engagement, and financial vitality. Particular emphasis is on creating adaptive systems to understand care and services: prior to or after an electronic health record implementation; integrating patient experience, safety, and staff/provider engagement; and cross-continuum care systems. Work with adaptive systems assure sustained improvement and innovation every day in care settings not just a one time investment to implement new technology or improvement activities.

Using evidence based leadership, the partnerships address some of the persistent problems healthcare leaders encounter – problems voiced as "our work to understand workflows did not give us the clinical or financial results we hoped for"; “we struggle for focus and results"; “how do we engage all caregivers – nurses, physicians, pharmacists – to get the clinical and service outcomes we have in our strategic plan?”; “what work does our board need to do to lead our community in clinical quality and safety?”; “we have lots of projects but they don’t seem to make an overall impact in the organization.”

Barbara Balik, RN, EdD

Barbara Balik RN, EdD heads Common Fire. She brings rich, deep, and successful skills to this work as a former hospital CEO in an integrated health system, a patient care executive/CNO in two organizations, executive leader of quality and safety within a large healthcare system, and maternal-child health nurse.

Her strategic and operational experience in healthcare includes work with a variety of healthcare organizations and boards – large and small hospitals, clinics, and community based care sites. She has worked with large health systems to improve the implementation of electronic health record systems offering an integrated approach to assure care is enabled by technology. Her expertise also includes Patient and Family Centered Care for an excellent patient experience and systems design for effective cross-continuum care.

She is a nationally recognized expert, speaker, and educator on healthcare safety, quality, and adaptive systems design. The well-received book The Heart of Leadership: Inspiration and Practical Guidance for Transforming Your Health Care Organization, co-authored with Jack Gilbert, reflects research in transformational healthcare leaders - the personal and organizational factors that contribute to outstanding results. Her career, research, and educational pursuits reflect a long term passion for transforming healthcare. More

Albuquerque, NM 87111
505.797.8933
barbara@thecommonfire.com