Outpatient Operations

UNC Department of Otolaryngology ⁄ Head and Neck Surgery 21-22 Annual Report

Our clinical leadership team is gearing up for some long-awaited restructuring this upcoming year. We are happy to announce Hannah Eskridge as our new Clinical Director for all our outpatient clinics. Hannah Eskridge started at UNC Otolaryngology/Head and Neck Surgery in 2001 as a Speech Language Pathologist. Since 2018, she has been the Director of the Children’s Cochlear Implant Program. We want to thank Elizabeth Ramsey for all her contributions to our department as she has held the interim clinical director role since December of this year. We are also celebrating the well-deserved promotion of Michelle Solano to the Clinic Manager role. She joins Joanne McClain, our other fearless leader, in leading the way for our wonderful clinic staff. We will be recruiting a third clinic manager as our department expands clinical locations. Since 2018 we have doubled our outpatient clinic presence from 3 to 6 sites and are in the planning phases of adding another in 2023.

We opened our Head and Neck oncology clinic at the new Rex Cancer Hospital in September 2022 and plan to open a Cary Adult Subspecialty Non-oncologic clinic in summer 2023. We were also approved to install a second CT scanner that will be located at our Meadowmont clinic which will be extremely beneficial to use with our new Rhinology Image Guidance equipment. At our current clinical locations, we have been hard at work on improvement and quality projects. We recently kicked off a project to improve our no-show rate and another project to improve and streamline our front desk processes. We also implemented a quarterly award to recognize staff members that are identified in positive Press Ganey comments! Speaking of awards, one of our nurses, Katy Kallam, from our Head and Neck Oncology Clinic, received a Daisy Award for being an “extraordinary” nurse. We are proud of and thankful for all our wonderful staff that help us to provide exceptional patient care.

Carolina Care Award Winners o Brent Senior o Brian Thorp o Jeff Blumberg o Madison Clark o Mark Weissler o Robert Buckmire o Wendell Yarbrough

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