Legacy Award: Paula Miller

Bob Page
I have this vivid memory of asking Paula into my office on a Friday afternoon. I said, hey, I have this idea. What would you think about stepping out of your comfort zone and training people on customer service here in our hospital? So she took a week off and she came back and thought about it and she said, "I'm in."

Alan Miller
When she was given the opportunity to do that, she just took to it.

Jean Miller
Even after she retired, if they would’ve figured out a way that she could’ve still come and taught that class, she would have done it in a heartbeat.

Tammy Peterman
Paula always knew that her passion was to make life better for others, and that's what she did. She did it at our place through the customer service training, but she also did it just the way she lived her life.

Terry Rusconi
There were a couple of things that made Paula the face of customer service here. First was she never met a stranger. The other thing that made her really perfect for that job is that she was able to give grace when people challenged some of the ideas that we were teaching.

Bob Page
When you put a 20-year veteran in front of any employee, and the employee might say, "Well, that can't work here," she could look right at them and go, "It absolutely can, because I've been here 20 years and this is how I do this."

Tammy Peterman
She had this innate ability to always connect with people. And the way she did it was she found common ground.

Gigi Siers
She would make connections. She would smile. She'd make eye contact. She would build a relationship in a short period of time. And that's what she wanted all of us to do is build relationships with people.

Alan Miller
We would run into people at Walmart and they’d come up to her and Paula this and that and then Paula, you know. Always nice. They go away, she says, "I have no idea who that is," but when you train 10,000 people, you have a lot of people know you and you know, remember her.

Rebecca Moburg
We have a whole slide dedicated to her and what she meant and what she stood for, and how important she is to the legacy of customer service training. We still try to stay very true to what she began, and we built on it. But the root of it is all Paula.

Gigi Siers
You think about all the people that come through the class. There's people that are working at all different levels. They come with different levels of educations and backgrounds, and she could cross. She could cross it all.

Terry Rusconi
Paula actually created the first database to generate our patient satisfaction data internally. So she would get weekly feeds from Press Ganey, load that data in and that really gave us the insights as to where we needed to focus and what we needed to work on.

Tammy Peterman
The impact of that. It's been tremendous, and it's something that we value at our place every day, because we knew that we had a lot of improvement to do, and Paula helped us with that improvement.

Bob Page
This idea of customer service training was pretty unique. And yet if you look back now, you go, "Oh, that was a no brainer." In retrospect, it's just one of those things that makes you smile when you think about how far we've come.

Alan Miller
She just was doing what she loved.

Jean Miller
She always loved when people came to work here, because I think she loved it so much. She wanted them to love it too, and she loved to take care of her family.

Alan Miller
Played cards and fed people.

Jean Miller
A little K-State football thrown in.

Terry Rusconi
She had a floor mat in her office that you could not avoid stepping on. And when you stepped on it, it played the K-State fight song. So many, many a day. I got to listen to the K-State fight song and just reminded me how much Paula loved the things she loved.

Tammy Peterman
One of the funnest things that Bob and I had the opportunity to do for Paula was to take flowers to her during her customer service training class when she had taught 10,000 individuals. And then we did it again when we got to 15,000 and we did it again when we got to 20,000. Those were highlights and moments I'll never forget. My guess is she remembered those as well.

Bob Page
I wish she could be there to be recognized in front of everybody. I'm pretty sure that she's smiling at this opportunity. She's going to be really proud about being recognized. I hope her family feels incredibly proud of what Paula has done.

Rebecca Moburg
There's nobody more deserving of a Legacy Award, because that's the word we use to describe Paula's impact all the time.

Terry Rusconi
Paula was just this bigger-than-life force, and she made a huge impact here.

Gigi Siers
She was just a gift.

Jean Miller
It's nice to know that even though she's not here, she's still remembered.

Tammy Peterman
She embodied our culture. Our culture is really to focus on patients and their families and one another. And that's exactly what Paula did.

Bob Page
She is embedded in this organization, and she will be part of The University of Kansas Health System forever.