Sundeep “Sunny” Shukla, M.D., M.B.A., is an emergency medicine physician, Associate Chief Medical Officer and Vice President for Medical Affairs at Cooley Dickinson Hospital in Northampton. He also serves as team physician for the Western New England College hockey team and the American Hockey League’s Springfield Thunderbirds. In addition to undergraduate studies from the University of Missouri and a medical degree from Manipal University in Karnataka, India, Dr. Shukla holds an M.B.A. from the University of Massachusetts Isenberg School of Management. Before joining Cooley Dickinson in 2024, he was Chief of Emergency Medicine and Medical Staff President at Baystate Noble Hospital in Westfield, where he co-chaired the Patient and Family Advisory Council.
Patient Safety Beat: How can hospital leadership best leverage ideas and input from patient and family advisers?
Sunny Shukla: I have been involved with patient and family advisory councils (PFACs) for many years and understand how valuable it is when people in the community bring their concerns and questions to PFAC members who can funnel that information to hospital leaders. At Baystate Medical Center, where I was a PFAC co-chair, we were able to make several process improvements because of simple things that people had recommended.
I think every hospital could benefit from having more members participate in PFACs and recently suggested to our co-chairs that we advertise on Facebook to attract more members. It helps to leverage digital and social media to our benefit because a collaborative voice is so important to our success as a community and as a place where we all want to live and get care.
Patient Safety Beat: Are there any specific PFAC projects you would like to share?
Sunny Shukla: Yes. In one example, a community member receiving infusion treatments at the hospital reached out to our PFAC to provide feedback on their experience. Hospital clinicians balance a number of responsibilities and priorities. In especially busy times, nurses might quickly and efficiently administer a patient’s medication without fully explaining what the medication is or why it is recommended. PFAC leaders relayed that information to our senior leadership team, infusion center director and physicians in the infusion center, who realized that this was something we could improve. By taking the time to discuss patients’ medications, we can further put them at ease, as evidenced by feedback we received from the patient, who informed us that they felt more at ease and empowered during their care.
Through its work, the PFAC also learned from patients in our infusion center that they would benefit from warm blankets as they received care in a space that often felt cool. By simply redeploying a blanket warmer from another part of the hospital, we could ensure their comfort and enhance their experience. While these solutions were simple, their impact on patients was anything but, and they serve as a reminder of what we can achieve by listening to and engaging with our patients.
Open lines of communication are so important. There are always operations we can improve. Even the small things can have an tremendous impact. It’s best to have a point person from the hospital to help guide the PFAC, whether that’s an operations leader, a manager, a director, or a senior leader. You need someone who can say, “Hey, I know just the person who can help fix this.”
Patient Safety Beat: Beyond PFACs, you are involved in quality and safety improvement at Cooley Dickinson. What is on the front burner for you now?
Sunny Shukla: Length of stay is one thing we’ve been focused on recently. We've launched complex care rounds, which bring together multidisciplinary specialists, such as hospitalists, social workers, case managers and hospice providers. These teams look at the individual needs of each patient and identify any barriers to safe discharge so that they may recover or receive further care at home or on an outpatient basis.
We also have a Daily Active Quality Safety Huddle each morning where we review things such as a “Cooley Catch,” an instance where a team member appropriately identifies a potential issue and acts quickly in the hospital or in our practices. We cover any potential issues with staffing, processes or supplies and discuss our quality metrics. We use dashboards to ensure transparency, as well as in our daily morning huddle, to collaborate with colleagues toward our shared quality and safety goals and the best ways to achieve them. We want our quality metrics to be front and center for all staff.
Cooley Dickinson is fortunate to be a member of MGB [Mass General Brigham]. Through our collective experience and resources we can make great strides across a number of areas to set and achieve collaborative goals and provide the very best care to our patients.
Patient Safety Beat: How do you apply your master’s degree in business to your medical practice?
Sunny Shukla: Medical school does a good job of preparing physicans to care for those who need them. However, as we know, today’s health care challenges include issues like access, cost and efficiency, which are not part of the traditional curriculum. Studying for an M.B.A. helped me take a more holistic view of health care and encouraged me to think about the impacts to human health outside of medical science. If we can create or build on systems that not only provide the best care to patients but do so efficiently and in the most appropriate setting, we can do better for our patients and ensure better outcomes. Simply put: My medical school training helped me learn how to care for my patients, and my business education is helping me create a better system to help all patients.
Patient Safety Beat: You’ve worked in a number of hospitals in and around Springfield, and are now in Northampton at Cooley Dickinson, a hospital that is part of the MGB system. It sounds like you’re quite involved in the community. How would you describe the hospital’s relationship with the local community?
Sunny Shukla: Most of our staff work here and live in the community. I live 0.9 miles away from the hospital, so I can walk to work, and people in my neighborhood have seen some of my appearances on TV news or have read articles I have written for local publications. There's a lot of pride associated with knowing that we live locally and provide care to our friends and neighbors. People will recognize me in local stores, my kids' soccer or hockey games, dance recitals and plays.
Our community wants to keep care local. And we want to be the local provider of choice; that is our goal. Cooley Dickinson is unique in that we are an amazing community hospital, and we are part of MGB. If patients need a specialist or require care that is not available locally, we can help.
While clinical teams across our system work together across all our hospitals, a tangible and more visible example of that collaboration is our patient shuttle service to Boston. Suspended during the pandemic for infection control reasons, we are excited to announce that it will resume this spring. For patients who need care at one of our Boston locations, including Mass General Hospital, Brigham and Women’s or Mass Eye and Ear, and need help with transportation, we can provide a ride to Boston and back. The feedback we have received from the community about this service highlights the fact that caring for someone’s physical health is important, but we also need understand their needs outside of the clinic or hospital setting. Our PFAC was instrumental in discussions to resume shuttle service, and this type of collaboration is crucial to our success as a community and a community-based health care system.
