Hi Team –

 

It certainly was a beautiful day for a picnic on Sunday. And the TriHealth Team turned out in record numbers at Kings Island where we nearly took over the amusement park to celebrate our TriHealth Team Member & Volunteer Appreciation Picnic! It was a wonderful sight to witness a sea of TriHealth Healthcare Hero t-shirts and apparel throughout the park as our team members, physicians and volunteers enjoyed rollercoasters, rides, food, fireworks and special time with family and friends. We are grateful for the opportunity to safely resume this important TriHealth tradition after a three-year hiatus due to COVID and are even more thankful to be able to celebrate you – the very best team in healthcare – in such a special way. Be sure to visit this link to view a photo gallery of all the Kings Island fun, including a pic of me riding the timeless BEAST rollercoaster with one of our team members! A big thank you to Amy Ackerman and the “Company Picnic” Planning Team for organizing such a wonderful event to celebrate our amazing team!!!

 

We all know that TriHealth’s hospitals, Emergency Departments, Priority Care Centers, and other essential services are always open – even during our company picnic – to serve our patients and community at any time of the day or night. So, as a small token of our appreciation to those working on Sunday, we treated our caregivers and support team members to a lunch or dinner meal during their shift. A BIG thank you to these team members and physicians who ensured that ALL of our patients were provided the best and safest care on Sunday…and every day! 

 

Our more than 170-year healthcare mission has been grounded in unwavering service to our community. And as the third largest employer in Cincinnati, TriHealth has a responsibility to serve as a leader in support of the broader needs of this community, often beyond the reach of the healthcare services we provide with excellence each and every day. So, four years ago, guided by team member feedback to streamline and better target our charitable giving requests, we made the decision to combine systemwide fundraising campaigns into a once-a-year event called the One Campaign. For the last two years, as we have all managed through COVID – including its financial impact on team members and our community – we have deliberately taken a lower-key approach to our One Campaign. However, your generous financial support never wavered. And because of your generosity, we were able to improve the well-being and touch the lives of thousands of our community members – including our own team members and patients! 

 

Today, as we emerge from the worst of this once-in-a-century global public health crisis, we recognize the need to once again step up to serve and support our community as we have for more than 170 years. So, this year, you'll see an increase in activities and communications at the local level of our system – our hospitals, practices, shared services and ambulatory campuses – to raise awareness of and encourage participation in the One Campaign. By giving, you can choose to support and advance the work of the United Way, ArtsWave, Ride Cincinnati (see more below) or any or all of our three TriHealth Foundations (Bethesda, Good Samaritan and McCullough-Hyde). These are important organizations with missions aligned with TriHealth to improve the health, well-being and quality of life of our community. Stay tuned to Weekly Update, Bridge, BUL and local level meetings throughout September for more details on how you can participate in the One Campaign and the host of fun activities we have in store for you to enjoy along the way! 

 

As a philanthropic giving option within our One Campaign, Ride Cincinnati is a grassroots cycling event that raises money for life-saving cancer research and treatment. Following a two-year hiatus due to COVID, TriHealth will again “field a team” to participate in this year’s Ride Cincinnati event. All of the money raised by “Team TriHealth” will support our TriHealth Cancer Institute to help fund world-class cancer care and research. When we last participated in 2019, nearly 40 TriHealth team members and physicians joined our TriHealth cycling team and together, we raised nearly $10,000 to benefit patients and families of the TriHealth Cancer Institute!

 

This year’s Ride Cincinnati event will take place on Saturday, September 17. Mark Witte, Vice President of Clinical Service Lines, and I are again serving as “Team TriHealth” co-captains, and we invite you to join our team! Anyone who registers to fundraise and ride with TriHealth will have their $100 registration fee waived and will receive a really cool TriHealth cycling jersey (similar to the one pictured), as well as two tickets to an upcoming Cincinnati Reds game. Click here to sign up and learn more….and we look forward to seeing you on the 17th!

 

Our role as exclusive medical provider for the upcoming LPGA Queen City Championship is enabling our system to participate in yet another unique community opportunity to grow and develop TriHealth team members and physicians. Ten lucky team members and leaders will participate in this new women’s leadership program, The Queen City Game Changers, which was created as part of the LPGA Queen City Championship. The program aims to accelerate personal development through executive coaching and specialized programming over the coming months. And our team members and leaders will participate among a cohort of 150 diverse business professionals and community leaders from across Greater Cincinnati and will be matched into small break-out groups with an executive coach and counselors. Click here to learn more about the TriHealth team members and leaders who will represent TriHealth in this program!

 

For the second year in a row, TriHealth has been recognized as one of Ohio’s Healthiest Employers! Each year, the Healthiest Employers awards program honors companies for their commitment to workplace wellness along with progressive health and wellness-focused workplace and benefit offerings. This recognition serves as another external validation of our system-wide focus on and commitment to team member and physician well-being, something more important than ever these past years as we managed through and now emerge from COVID. And we were encouraged to see nine other area employers who we serve through our Corporate Health and Employer Solutions division also named among finalists for this award!

 

Last Thursday, our leadership team participated in our 22nd Leadership Development Institute (LDI) themed “Back to Mastery: Renewing and Building on Our Foundation of Excellence.” This two-thirds-day virtual LDI was focused on the foundational work of remastering our proven TriHealth Way best practices. Over the past two-plus years of managing through surge after surge of COVID to ensure that every patient was cared for, we needed to “triage” our work which resulted in some aspects of our TriHealth Way being deferred or backburnered. So, we have understandably seen a loss of consistency and effectiveness with many of our proven TriHealth Way leadership, safety and service practices.

 

We opened our LDI by once again re-grounding our leaders in the “why” of the TriHealth Way and the importance of our journey from Good to Great to “Get Healthcare Right.” Simply put, evidence-based service and safety practices that are consistently and competently applied in a patient-centered and values-based culture produce better clinical outcomes and a superior patient experience! But our “Back to Mastery” work – or getting back to ALWAYS with our foundational TriHealth Way practices (such as AIDET, Nurse Leader Rounding, Bedside Shift Reports, Daily Huddles, Speak Up for Safety, and many more) – reaches far beyond our leadership team. It represents our commitment to invest in and support our team members with resources such as coaches and local level trainers to provide skill building and in-the-moment coaching. Ultimately, “Back to Mastery” is about our 13,000 TriHealth team members, physicians and leaders working together and utilizing proven tools and practices so that we can better care for and support those we serve each and every day. During our LDI, I shared with our leaders what Getting Healthcare Right looks like through the “voice” of three of our patients. Our sacred work in Getting Healthcare Right is to provide this level of clinical excellence consistently to every one of the more than 600,000 patients we are privileged to serve each year! So, check out this short video and stay tuned for more information in the weeks ahead from your leaders about how we can advance our work to master the TriHealth Way and ultimately deliver better clinical outcomes for those we serve.

 

This week, we are seeing more encouraging signs that new COVID cases and hospitalizations have plateaued and have begun to decline. Three counties in Northern Kentucky moved to “Low” risk, per CDC community level standards, and four Southwest Ohio counties, including Hamilton and Warren Counties, moved to “Medium” risk level. Accompanying these shifts was a further decrease in the region’s case rate, which currently stands at 185/100,000 population. As discussed in our August Town Hall, we will continue to monitor this case rate over the coming weeks in the hopes that transmission rates continue to decline – and remain below the 200/100,000 population threshold which will allow for the rollback of our mask requirement in non-clinical areas. Here at TriHealth, we have 36 COVID inpatients and one currently on a ventilator, with a 31.5% positivity rate over the past two weeks (see COVID sidebar graphic for details).

 

Team members, physicians and the Oxford community are invited to celebrate the 65th anniversary of McCullough-Hyde Memorial Hospital (MHMH) at an open house on Thursday, September 15 from 4:30-7:30pm. McCullough-Hyde opened its doors in 1957, the culmination of the vision of two local families who sought to bring high quality healthcare to the Oxford community. And 57 years later – or eight years ago – MHMH joined TriHealth, allowing our system to extend our mission of service to the Oxford community. In the ensuing years, we have made significant investments in new clinical services, facilities and physician recruitment, while expanding TriHealth clinical service lines to Oxford to advance our work of Getting Healthcare Right for every patient we serve including the Oxford community! Click here for more details, and we hope to see you there!

 

As we head into Labor Day weekend and the unofficial end of summer, I hope you enjoy a safe and relaxing holiday with your loved ones. And to our team members and physicians who will continue to care for our patients throughout the upcoming holiday weekend – thank you for your sacrifices and dedicated service this weekend and throughout the year!