Chief Clinical Officer
Hospice of Santa Cruz County
940 Disc Drive
Scotts Valley
CAUSA
95066
Email:
owen.debbie@morrisbb.net
Biographical Sketch: BIO: Deborah L Owen, RN
Deborah Owen, RN is the Chief Clinical Officer at Hospice of Santa Cruz County. In this role she leads the clinical operations for the hospice. Debbie has been key in introducing best practices to the clinical teams taught and gathered from her previous years experience as leadership coach to senior hospice teams across the country. By integrating key performance metrics and evidence based medical prognostication, clinical operations team is preparing for the next chapter in end of life care. Drawing on the experience of former family members, volunteers and staff as health care consumers, Hospice of Santa Cruz County is “visioning” an intentional design for care of chronic, long term illnesses that encompasses all the available resources of the community.
Debbie Owen joined Hospice of Santa Cruz County after working nationally as an Executive Level Coach for Hospice Senior Teams where she worked in partnership to introduce specific and measurable operational goals that could be cascaded throughout the leadership team. Using these clearly defined goals to align leadership strategies and actions, Debbie’s partners were able to move from negative to positive operating incomes, increase admission conversion ratios, improve employee engagement and achieve economically sustainable clinician to patient caseloads. Debbie has been a successful presenter at NHPCO MLC in April 2011, 2009 and NHPCO CTC in September 2009.
Debbie has worked in hospice since 1991 learning hospice operations from the “inside out” serving as; a volunteer, hospice aide, nurse case manager, inpatient nurse clinician, admission nurse, and in senior leadership as VP of Business Operations leading the admission, finance, technology, human resources and administrative support teams. She left a successful career in international project management in 1992 returning to school to become a nurse; a hospice nurse.