August 16, 2022
Hi Team –
It’s hard to believe, but we’re quickly approaching the last few weeks of summer, with the start of school now underway, and Labor Day and the football season just around the corner. So, I hope you’ve found time this summer to relax and recharge with family and friends and are ready to tackle the exciting work ahead in FY2023.
Getting Healthcare Right
FY2022 Close and FY2023 Initial Progress
As we begin our new Fiscal Year (FY) 2023, let’s take a look at where we ended up in FY2022, and what’s ahead on our Journey to Get Healthcare Right.
Although FY2022 was another challenging year for TriHealth and the entire U.S. healthcare industry due to COVID’s unexpected twists and turns, we continued to make marked progress across our five Pillars – Culture & People, Safety & Quality, Service, Growth, and Finance. In most cases, we achieved our stretch goals, and when we fell short because of COVID, in every case, we still outperformed our industry. Following are a few key highlights:
- CULTURE & PEOPLE: In a year where most U.S. hospitals and health systems experienced record declines or setbacks in employee engagement due to staffing shortages and intense workloads caused by COVID, TriHealth met or exceeded three of our four culture/people goals. This was due in large part to our sharp focus on supporting our people throughout COVID as they selflessly cared for our patients, and our multi-year, proactive efforts to build and sustain our TriHealth Way Culture of Leading, Serving, and Delivering Care! In FY2022, we achieved a 10% improvement in physician and team member engagement, curbed COVID-fueled turnover, and advanced diversity in leadership – all far exceeding trends in the U.S. healthcare industry!!
- SAFETY & QUALITY: Last year’s near overwhelming COVID surges increased our patient volumes by more than 30% over pre-pandemic levels, with the largest impact in our Emergency Department (EDs) and inpatient units, which significantly increased the potential for harm events, such as Falls and Hospital Acquired Infections (HAIs). While we fell just short of our targets in both of these areas as we managed through these surges, we should be reassured by the fact that we continued to outperform our industry in nearly every infection prevention category throughout FY2022 – well above the 75th percentile (or better than 75% of all other hospitals) – real evidence of our strong culture of safety. Also worth noting is that we performed among the top one-third of industry peers in preventing Falls with Harm and had fewer falls than health systems of similar size to TriHealth by more than 21% (based on Premier database)!!
- SERVICE: Given the significant increase in COVID admissions and ED visits, and the need for visitor restrictions in these areas, we were not surprised to see that, like most other U.S. health systems, we fell short of achieving our ambitious goals for both HCAHPS and EDCAHPS (hospital and ED patient experience). However, we should be encouraged that our hospitals outperformed our peers overall and that three of our six Emergency Departments (Arrow Springs, McCullough-Hyde, and Good Samaritan Western Ridge) performed in the top quartile for EDCAHPS! And, TriHealth Physician Partners (TPP) – consisting of our nearly 700 employed physicians – continued to excel in patient experience throughout FY2022, meeting our CGCAHPS goal, and consistently performing in the top quartile compared with other physician practices across the nation! This sustained level of strong performance in serving our TPP patients is evidence that The TriHealth Way of Leading, Serving and Delivering Care is effective and hardwired into TPP’s everyday practices – assuring an exceptional patient experience, ALWAYS!
- GROWTH: Equally as impressive, in a year where most U.S. health systems continued to experience lower than average volumes in specialty and ambulatory services, TriHealth experienced year-over-year increases in the number of patients cared for in nearly every clinical service – evidence the community is increasingly turning to TriHealth when in need of healthcare. And we exceeded our targets for both Net Operating Revenue and TPP patient encounters and Worked Relative Value Units (wRVU)!
- FINANCE: With much of Fiscal Year 2022 devoted to managing through surge after surge, TriHealth successfully “rallied” in the final quarter of FY2022, following a very challenging third quarter in which we lost more than $20 million due to COVID. And this recovery resulted in our system exceeding our FY2022 operating budget of 3% – once again outperforming most area health systems. But most importantly, this strong financial performance is supporting continued investments in our people, our facilities, and our services, all further advancing our work to Get Healthcare Right!!
And with the worst of COVID now behind us, in FY2023, we can shift our full focus away from managing surge after surge and back to achieving greater consistency and effectiveness in our proven TriHealth Way of Leading, Serving, and Delivering Care evidence-based practices. This will most assuredly enable us to accelerate our industry leadership even further through continued year-over-year improvement across all five pillars. And we are already seeing proof of this with improving performance in most of our FY2023 Pillar Goals, including patient experience, growth, team member and physician engagement, new hire turnover, and financial performance.
By achieving our FY2023 Pillar Goals, we will move TriHealth another step closer to our vision of becoming an industry model of excellence in safety, clinical quality, patient experience, and team culture – which is how we lead the way in Getting Healthcare Right!
Leadership Appointments Assure Continued Progress with Employer Solutions and Population Health
I announced back in early June that Terri Hanlon-Bremer, MSN, RN, who previously served in the role of Senior Vice President (SVP), Employer Solutions and Population Health, would take on the role of TriHealth Chief Operating Officer (COO). Since Terri’s promotion, we have been working to ensure a smooth and successful transition of her former responsibilities with Employer Solutions and Population Health. As part of this work, I’m excited to announce the following internal appointments – three more examples of our commitment to invest in and develop our people and to provide career advancement through promotion from within:
Patrick Wright, currently Vice President, Hospital Operations for Good Samaritan Hospital, will become System Vice President, Population Health, effective August 29, 2022. In this role, he will take on operational responsibility for much of our system’s population health “enterprise,” or functions, and will work with a wide range of teams to ensure execution of our key initiatives supporting care delivery innovation and strong clinical and financial performance with our value-based contracts. Patrick started his career in healthcare as a medical technologist and joined TriHealth in 2013 as Senior Clinical Operations Support Consultant. He is a proven leader with a stellar track record of managing complex projects and functions involving multiple stakeholders to achieve successful outcomes. Gayle Mattson, President and CEO of Hospice of Cincinnati (HOC) Navigators, will also take on the 
additional role of System Executive for Population Health Clinical Programs, with senior leadership responsibility for Population Health Pharmacy, Ambulatory and Inpatient Care Management, Ambulatory Diabetes Education, and Post-Acute Care. Gayle is a registered nurse with many years of experience in value-based care, Medicare Advantage, and post-acute services, and is uniquely prepared for this expanded role.
Steve Mombach, Senior Vice President of Ambulatory Services and Network Development, has assumed additional executive leadership responsibility for Employer Solutions/Corporate Health and Event Medicine. Steve’s exceptional leadership ability, passion for the TriHealth Way, and innate ability to “get things done,” along with his unique corporate client expertise, make him the right leader to take on these vital growth responsibilities for TriHealth.Each of these leaders has a strong track record of success and accomplishment at TriHealth, coupled with a deep commitment to live our values and role model the TriHealth Way as servant leaders for our team members and patients. Their appointments further demonstrate TriHealth’s unwavering commitment to invest in and develop our own team members to take on larger roles. Over the past two years, more than 90% of all senior leadership positions and nearly 70% of all leader roles have been successfully filled from within TriHealth… a shining testament to our people and our culture! Please join me in congratulating Patrick, Gayle and Steve and wishing them all the best in their new and expanded roles!
COVID Update
New COVID cases and hospitalizations have stabilized over the past few weeks, which is an early sign that COVID prevalence in the community is starting to plateau, especially in Southwest Ohio, where several counties remain at high risk. The most current case rate is at 228/100,000 population per week. Here at TriHealth, we have 34 COVID inpatients and one on a ventilator, with a 31.1% positivity rate over the past two weeks (see COVID sidebar graphic for details). We continue to monitor COVID trends closely and remain fully prepared to respond to any significant changes, if necessary.
August Town Hall Meeting TODAY
I hope you are planning to join us at our August Team Member Town Hall TODAY at noon on Bridge. We’ll celebrate recent system wins, provide current COVID updates, and share more about our FY2022 results, as well as our plans and initiatives underway for FY2023 and beyond. And, as always, we will devote plenty of time to answer your questions – with some great TriHealth prizes available to those who choose to join the conversation! So, I hope to “see” you at our Town Hall later today!
As I’ve often said, what makes TriHealth a great organization is our people – team members, physicians, and volunteers – and as the past year’s performance and progress have once again shown us, we have the best healthcare team, anywhere!! Thank you for ALWAYS choosing to show up and give your best for our patients, for our community, and for each other! Because of YOU, I’m confident, we will continue to lead the way in Getting Healthcare Right for all those we serve!
Let’s make FY2023 our best year yet!!