Hi Team –

 

I hope everyone enjoyed a wonderful Fourth of July holiday weekend – and a special thank you, once again, to all of our team members and physicians who continued to care for our patients over the long holiday weekend!

 

Monday marked the start of the first full week of Fiscal Year 2023, so “Happy New Fiscal Year!” Thanks to you, our incredible TriHealth Team, we have much to celebrate as we put the worst of COVID behind us and closed out another successful year with momentum and improving performance across all five pillars! And the year ahead promises to be filled with even more important milestones and accelerated progress on our Journey to Get Healthcare Right, all as we deliver on the Triple Aim Plus One – better care, better health, and better value for our patients – plus, an enhanced work and practice environment for our physicians and team members!

 

It is with mixed emotions that I share that Cathy French, Senior Vice President (SVP) and Chief Information Officer (CIO), will retire from TriHealth at the end of September. Cathy shared with me that this difficult decision was prompted by recent health challenges and her desire to focus fully on her health and continued treatment this year and beyond. I thoroughly understand and respect Cathy’s decision, and am deeply grateful for the remarkable contributions she has made throughout her impressive 44-year TriHealth career.

 

Since starting her career as a staff nurse at Bethesda North Hospital in 1979, Cathy quickly took on, and excelled in, progressively more responsible leadership roles in Information Systems (IS), culminating in her appointment as SVP/CIO in March 2020. Cathy’s leadership of our industry-leading, nationally recognized IS and Analytics functions have earned TriHealth coveted HIMSS Stage 7 and “Most Wired” recognitions. Most importantly, Cathy and our IS team have played an essential role in building the “Big Data” capabilities, which include availability of real-time clinical information and actionable insights across our system, such as identification of unmanaged chronic conditions, gaps in care, and rising risk. These capabilities are now enabling TriHealth to measurably improve the health of our patients and community, which directly supports our work of Getting Healthcare Right. And her amazing servant leadership was on full display during the COVID pandemic, as she and her team led the rapid and dramatic expansion of TriHealth’s IS network to support thousands of team members working remotely during the first year of the pandemic, while also building out our telehealth platforms to allow for continued safe care and service to our patients virtually during the worst of the pandemic. Cathy has embodied our foundational TriHealth Way values throughout her career and has lived and role modeled our mission in service to our patients, team members, and physicians. On behalf of our entire TriHealth Team, we thank Cathy for her dedicated servant leadership and wish her all the very best in her retirement!

 

As the most recent example of our system’s commitment to grow our people and build a strong internal “talent pipeline” to fill key staff and leadership positions, I am pleased to announce that Donna Peters, Vice President of Information Systems, will assume the role of Interim CIO as Cathy transitions into retirement. Cathy will work alongside Donna to ensure a smooth and effective transition in the System CIO role through September 30th. Donna has served TriHealth capably over the past 24 years in a number of progressively responsible IS leadership roles as well as co-chairing SOAR since March of 2019. Please join me in congratulating Donna as she takes on this important leadership role for TriHealth.

 

I am thrilled to share that earlier last month, the Bethesda Inc. Board (one of TriHealth’s two sponsors) unanimously approved $18 million in funding through its bi3 funding arm over the next three years to provide startup funding for three critically important programs at TriHealth – Precision Medicine, Behavioral Health, and Health Equities. Nationally and regionally, these programs are often inadequate or non-existent due to limited or no fee-for-service funding or reimbursement. The initial funding through bi3 will enable TriHealth to accelerate an essential part of our Journey to Get Healthcare Right by helping us create and expand preventive, early detection, and other services needed to improve the health of our community. Over time, TriHealth will provide sustained funding for these programs through redeployment of resources generated from our industry-leading performance in value-based contracts and payment systems.

 

In this issue, we will take a closer look at the exciting investments we are making in Precision Medicine. In future Weekly Updates, I will showcase our work to expand access to Behavioral Health Services, along with the necessary investments we are making in new programs and capabilities to proactively address health disparities.

 

bi3 has awarded TriHealth a $4.3 million grant over the next three years to establish the region’s first formalized Precision Medicine Institute – giving tens of thousands of patients in our community access to the most advanced multi-disciplinary genetic testing, counseling, and targeted therapy services. Increasingly, medical and genetic advances are calling for genetic testing as an essential clinical data element in the “modern” patient history and physical which will help to predict disease, assess risk, select therapy, prevent adverse drug reactions, and enroll patients in clinical trials. The TriHealth Precision Medicine Institute will include staff genetic counseling experts in key clinical areas such as preventive health, cancer risk, precision oncology, heredity cardiology, women's services, and pharmacogenomics. The launch of the Institute builds on previous bi3-funded work of training clinicians on the use of precision medicine and genomic data in patient care decisions. Because of its ability to identify risks earlier and tailor targeted therapies for optimal outcomes, Precision Medicine is rapidly becoming a standard of care. Establishing the Precision Medicine Institute is another shining example of TriHealth’s commitment to achieving the Triple Aim, as it will ultimately, allow us to deliver optimal care, improve patient health and satisfaction, and lower cost through earlier detection and more targeted therapies!

 

A big thank you to Dr. James Maher, System Chief of the TriHealth Cancer Institute, for his leadership in Precision Medicine, Jill Miller, President and CEO of bi3, and the Bethesda Inc. Board for this latest funding to help stand up these essential community health programs, which are integral to our vital work of Getting Healthcare Right for every individual we serve!!

 

Last week, we celebrated our graduating resident and fellowship physicians as they embark on the next phase of their profession and careers. And this week, we are thrilled to welcome a brand-new group of residents and fellows who will begin the next phase of their clinical training programs at TriHealth this year. This is a diverse group of 39 new residents and fellows from across the globe who will continue their training in one of our six residency and two fellowship programs. In fact, this group includes representation from EVERY continent in the world (with the exception of Antarctica) – evidence of TriHealth’s commitment to building a truly “world-class” physician community. Many new residents cited TriHealth’s welcoming “TriHealth Way” culture and patient care environment, and how kind and friendly our team members and physicians were during residency interviews, as the deciding factor in choosing to further their training in TriHealth’s Graduate Medical Education program. Just another example of the value of showing up as ONE Team, TriHealth STRONG!!

 

While we’ve seen a slight uptick in new COVID cases regionally and here at TriHealth (see graphic to the right), these modest ebbs and flows remain consistent with the patterns expected during this endemic stage of the virus. The latest seven-day moving average in Ohio showed a very slight increase in new cases – from 138 to 147 new cases/100,000 population. Nationally, new cases remain stable at 232 new cases/100,000.

 

FY2023 is off to a promising start, with so much to look forward to on our Journey to Get Healthcare Right! Thank you to the best healthcare team, ANYWHERE, for all you do to make TriHealth GREAT – for each other and everyone we serve!! Wishing you and your family a wonderful second half of summer, enjoying much-deserved time away with family and friends!