Hi Team –

 

Summer weather is heating up in Cincinnati, and it is providing lots of opportunities to enjoy our favorite outdoor activities, including cheering on our Cincinnati Reds, enjoying family outings, and attending our favorite festivals and concerts. Speaking of favorite concerts, I hope you can make it to the upcoming CSO “Red, White and Boom” Fourth of July Concert at Riverbend. There’s still time to get your discounted $5 tickets, which you can reserve by clicking here. Be sure to get out there and take advantage of all that summer offers here in Greater Cincinnati for some well-deserved fun and relaxation! 

 

Given that my Weekly Updates these past few months have been “packed” with important updates, exciting wins, and sadly, necessary commentary and response to troubling national and world events, I’m going to try to keep this update short and a bit lighter... well, short for me, anyway!

 

This coming Sunday, June 19th, we celebrate Juneteenth, which became a national holiday in 2021. Juneteenth (short for “June Nineteenth”) is the day in 1865 when federal troops arrived in Galveston, Texas to ensure all previously enslaved people were freed, marking the official end of slavery in our nation. Juneteenth keeps this landmark act and its significance in shaping our country’s social fabric alive in our hearts and minds. This is especially important today, more than 150+ years later, since, sadly, we are still fighting to ensure that civil rights, equality, and social and racial justice are guaranteed to ALL, including and especially Black Americans!

 

While Juneteenth is not one of our seven paid holidays at TriHealth, we commemorate the holiday and its significance across the community in a number of important ways. TriHealth is a proud sponsor of Cincinnati’s 35th Annual Juneteenth Festival hosted by Juneteenth Cincinnati. Additionally, TriHealth and our TriHealth Resource Initiative for Black Employees ERG (Employee Resource Group) will be volunteering at the Juneteenth Festival in Eden Park on Saturday, June 18. At this event, TriHealth will provide the community with important information on health and wellness, as well as exciting career opportunities available at TriHealth. We will also offer potentially life-saving health screenings, such as blood pressure and BMI/Body Mass screenings. Click here if you are interested in learning more about volunteering with other TriHealth team members at the Festival. And be sure to visit Bridge for details on other Juneteenth celebrations happening throughout the coming week.

 

I’m thrilled to share that three of our team members were recognized earlier this month as finalists at the Cincinnati Business Courier’s Annual Health Care Heroes Awards ceremony. And our own, Tashawna Otabil, Chief Diversity Officer and Vice President of Managed Care, was selected as the award winner in the Community Outreach category. She was recognized for her strong leadership of TriHealth’s work to address healthcare disparities and inequities by expanding access to care and creating a more inclusive culture for patients, team members, and physicians. Tashawna was joined at the ceremony by award finalists, Lynda Garcia, Vice President of Talent Development and Organizational Effectiveness, and Jeremiah Kirkland, the newly appointed President and COO of Bethesda Butler Hospital. Lynda, a finalist in the Manager category, was honored for her innovative leadership in conceiving and standing up our Team Member Resource Center, which played an instrumental role in supporting our team members through the COVID pandemic and beyond. And Jeremiah, a finalist in the Innovator category, was recognized for initiating and implementing a number of unique community collaborations, including teaming with bi3 and Cincinnati Public Schools for the School to Work program and for connecting clinicians with community care workers to surround patients who have chronic conditions with the needed services to maintain their best health. Congratulations to Tashawna, Lynda, and Jeremiah... you make us proud!!

 

Last Thursday, at Modern Healthcare’s National Value-Based Care Virtual Conference, I had the privilege of representing TriHealth and telling our story about how, together, we are Getting Healthcare Right. Lumeris CEO, Mike Long, and I were featured in a fireside chat to showcase how TriHealth is leading the journey to value-based care (or Population Health) to deliver on the Triple Aim of better care, better health, and better value. We discussed the impressive progress TriHealth has made to improve the health status of our patients and community by transforming care and payment models to focus more on health and wellness, prevention, early detection, and better management of chronic conditions and rising risk. Click here to view the session and get energized by just how far we have come!!!

 

June is also National Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, and Queer+ (LGBTQ+) Pride Month, and it provides us with yet another important opportunity to live our values and to reaffirm the 170-year legacy of our founders, the German Methodist Deaconesses and Sisters of Charity. This legacy is built on our deeply held commitment to bring our healing ministry of compassionate care and service to the entire community, including and especially the poor, marginalized, and under-represented. Again this year, TriHealth is excited to be the official healthcare provider for Cincinnati Pride – one of the many ways we carry out our sacred mission and vision to Get Healthcare Right. In this case, our values guide our actions as we foster a more diverse, inclusive, equitable and welcoming culture and patient care environment for our team members and the entire community. By doing so, we are helping to ensure equitable access to the highest quality healthcare for every individual we serve, while building an organization that “reflects” our increasingly diverse community. A BIG shout out to our team members who make up our LGBTQ+ PRISM ERG for their leadership in helping us to be a better and more understanding organization and a more inclusive culture and care environment. Learn more on Bridge. 

 

The slow, but steady rise in COVID cases continues across the region and nation, including here at TriHealth. Fortunately though, hospitalizations and disease severity remain low, despite this uptick, indicating that vaccines, boosters, and oral antivirals continue to do their job! As I shared last week, we are closely monitoring new cases and hospitalizations, along with the region’s other local health systems. If necessary – and we hope that will not be the case – we are prepared to put in place additional targeted safety measures (such as mask-wearing in non-clinical healthcare settings), but no changes are needed for now. I will keep you posted on any new developments in my coming Weekly Updates.

 

Thank you, as always, for who you are and for all you do to Live Our Values as we fulfill our mission to improve the health status and wellbeing of the entire community and ALL those we serve!