Mariane Stefano

SVP & Chief Experience Officer
Nemours Children’s Health System

Mariane is the Senior Vice President and Chief Experience Officer for Nemours Children’s Health System with hospitals in Orlando, Florida and Wilmington, Delaware. Mariane has been with Nemours for 24 years, serving in various hospital, practice and enterprise leadership roles. Her career in healthcare began nearly 40 years ago as a pediatric nurse in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Upon completing her Masters Degree in Business Administration in 1980, Mariane transitioned from nursing into hospital operations. In her current role, Mariane is responsible for driving all service excellence initiatives throughout the organizations’ multiple operating sites as well as the implementation of strategic improvement methodologies and practices to support Nemours’ continuous improvement philosophy and management system.

Mariane was a former Board Executive for the Ronald McDonald House of Delaware and currently serves on the Board of the Kennett, Pennsylvania YMCA. She is a Fellow in the American College of Healthcare Executives, and a member of the Association of Patient Experience and the Beryl Institute.

She lives in Chadds Ford, PA, with her husband, Dr. John Stefano. They have two grown children—Brian and Megan—and 2 dogs. She maintains a healthy work-life balance by heading to the beach, boating, and gardening.

Check out the incredible speaker line-up to see who will be joining Mariane.

Download The Latest Agenda

Patient Experience Innovation And Technology

Tuesday, July 12th, 2016

08:50 Keynote: Applying LEAN Principles To Reduce Human Suffering

The focus of any Continuous Improvement (a.k.a.LEAN) journey is the focus on the “customer”, insuring that we constantly evaluate processes to determine whether or not they add value, as defined by the customer. The identification and elimination of waste (anything that is non-value added) is therefore a fundamental concept to Continuous Improvement. In healthcare, as in manufacturing (where LEAN originated), there are several forms of waste such as transportation, inventory, search time, complexity, etc. We believe there is an additional form of waste that is actually created by defects in our systems and processes. That is the waste of human suffering.

In this presentation, participants will:
• Recognize the difference between “inherent suffering” and “avoidable suffering”
• Understand how the other forms of waste contribute to “avoidable suffering”
• Learn how Continuous Improvement can prevent patient suffering