Hi Team – 

 

The Weekly Update is coming to you a day early this week because we have many special events and celebrations kicking off today and throughout the week at TriHealth, and we want you to be aware of and make the most of all of them! 

 

This coming Sunday, November 13 marks the 170^th birthday of Good Samaritan Hospital, with so much to celebrate and be proud of!! Since its start in 1852, Good Sam has built an enduring legacy of trust and healing by serving our community with compassionate and exceptional healthcare, always!

 

Widely known for its nationally recognized Maternity and High-Risk Neonatal services, Good Sam delivers more babies than any other hospital in the region. It is also a leading provider of neurological and stroke care, cancer care, orthopedics, heart and vascular care, and emergency services. And as the oldest and largest private teaching and specialty healthcare facility in Greater Cincinnati, Good Sam continues to train and prepare the next generation of physicians and other healthcare professionals. 

 

To ensure that Good Sam continues to be a preferred community provider and nationally recognized educator and innovator for many more “birthdays” to come, just a few weeks ago, we broke ground on a $240 million facility investment to transform Good Sam into a regional destination for healthcare and a medical campus of the future! The campus will include a new state-of-the-art peri-operative facility, a comprehensive array of advanced outpatient services, including bone marrow transplant, precision medicine, imaging, cardiology and others, along with a new Emergency Department. 

 

To honor this important milestone in service to our community, the Good Sam team has planned a number of events for next week to celebrate with team members, physicians, our patients, and the community. Happy 170^th Birthday, Good Sam – and here’s to many, many more!

 

This month, Hospice of Cincinnati/HOC Navigators is also celebrating a big birthday – its 45^th year of serving the Greater Cincinnati community! Established in 1977, Hospice of Cincinnati was a pioneer in end-of-life care as the fourth oldest hospice in the country and the oldest and most respected hospice in the Cincinnati region. In 2020, Hospice of Cincinnati and the many advanced illness and grief programs it offers, came together to form HOC Navigators – a collection of integrated programs designed to help guide those in need through advanced illness and end-of-life care.

 

In celebration of this big milestone, HOC will host a series of forums throughout November as part of National Hospice & Palliative Care Month. These forums will educate and engage team members and honor HOC’s 45-year legacy as a national leader for compassionate hospice and end-of-life care. Click here to learn more about HOC’s history and the important role it plays in the community.

 

Getting Healthcare Right is all about delivering on the Triple Aim of better care, better health, and better value, while fostering an enhanced work and practice environment where team members and practitioners feel engaged, valued, and supported in delivering the very best care to those we serve. And your feedback is foundational to our ability to “move the needle” as we work together to elevate our performance and continue to advance from Good to Great for those we serve and those who serve. 

 

Throughout the year, we seek out your input in a number of formal and informal ways, including rounding, huddles, hallway conversations, use of Stoplight Reports, and surveys. In March, we conducted our most recent Engagement Pulse Survey, which helped to identify key opportunities for improvement throughout our organization. As a direct result of the survey feedback you provided over the years, TriHealth has invested millions of dollars and taken important steps that are leading to an improved work and practice environment for our team members and clinicians. A few recent notable examples include significant investments in our hospitals (Good Sam MFP, Bethesda North Heart Hospital), ambulatory network (TriHealth Finneytown and Glenway), and specialty programs (e.g., Heart Failure, Bone Marrow Transplant, Precision Medicine, Ambulatory Behavioral Health, etc.), as well as new and meaningful investments in our people, including: 

Click here to review highlights of the many ways we are working to make TriHealth THE employer and health system of choice based on your feedback.

 

Our fall Engagement Pulse and Safety Survey launches later today, providing you with yet another important opportunity to let us know what we are “getting right” and where we can improve. Look for a personalized link sent to your TriHealth email later today to access the confidential 2022 Engagement Pulse and Safety Survey from Perceptyx, the firm assisting TriHealth in conducting this survey. You can also access the survey by simply texting “2022Survey” to 22333 from your smartphone. Thank you, in advance, for your participation in the Pulse Survey! Visit Bridge to learn more.   

Today, we also kick off SOAR (Serving Others Achieving Results) Week, our annual weeklong celebration of our people and the TriHealth Way of Serving and Delivering Care practices!

 

Foundational to our bold vision of Getting Healthcare Right is a patient-centered, collaborative, and team member-engaged system culture powered by evidence-based best practices that equip and empower us to consistently deliver better care, better health and better value to all our patients and community. As we redouble our efforts to remaster our TriHealth Way service, safety, and reliability practices across all of our clinical and support areas, SOAR Week serves as an intentional reminder and reinforcement of the impact of this important work in improving clinical outcomes. It also allows us to celebrate YOU, our amazing TriHealth Team, who are bringing the TriHealth Way to life – at every encounter, always! Our SOAR co-chairs Donna Peters and Randy Hammann, and our SOAR Champions have put together a week-long extravaganza of really fun SOAR Week activities aimed at connecting all of us to our TriHealth Way work – from AIDET + The Promise to ALWAYS Behaviors, and much more! Visit Bridge for all the details and have a GREAT SOAR Week!

 

And speaking of redoubling our efforts to remaster the TriHealth Way, next week on November 15 and 16, our 800+ TriHealth leaders will convene at the Northern Kentucky Convention Center for our first in-person Leadership Development Institute (LDI) in nearly three years!! We are excited to finally be able to safely gather again as a full leadership team to connect, learn, and grow together over two days of LDI – all to become even better servant leaders for our team members! 

 

Now seven years into our Journey to Get Healthcare Right – including more than two years successfully navigating through all of the unknowns and ups and downs of the COVID pandemic – we know for certain the value and the power of our culture and the TriHealth Way. We’ve experienced first-hand and now know that when our TriHealth Way evidence-based service, safety, and care delivery practices are consistently applied in a patient-centered, values-based, and team member-engaged culture, we are able to deliver better clinical outcomes, a superior patient experience, and improved health and wellness, always!

 

So, our November LDI, themed “Breaking Through: Advancing Our Journey to Mastery,” is once again dedicated to investing in and preparing our leaders – as servant leaders – to teach and support our team members in their own skills development and re-mastery of the TriHealth Way. This will enable us all to continue to work together as ONE Team, TriHealth Strong, so we can better serve and support each other, our patients, and the community!

 

As always, expect to hear from your leaders soon after the LDI about what they learned and how they will be actively assisting you in remastering our foundational TriHealth Way best practices! And thank you for supporting your leaders as they take the necessary time away from their daily responsibilities to participate in this important LDI…so ultimately, we can be better, more responsive servant leaders for you so in turn you can do your best and be your best for those we serve!

 

Last Friday, we wrapped up the One Campaign, raising to date over $600,000! And to celebrate the end of our successful campaign, we surprised Dorionne Whitaker, Certified Nurse Practitioner for Pulmonary and Sleep (pictured right), with a special grand prize announcement. As one of the many team members who donated online to the One Campaign, Dorionne’s name was randomly drawn last Friday as the winner of our $2,500 grand prize! Click here to watch Dorionne’s fun reaction to the announcement we surprised her with at work in her practice. 

 

A BIG thank you to EVERY team member and physician who generously supported our One Campaign! Your donations will provide much-needed funding for a wide range of programs that help to strengthen our community and make Cincinnati a great place to live for all of us, including and especially those most in need! 

 

One of TriHealth’s many special traditions is sharing a holiday meal each year with ALL of our 13,000 team members, physicians and volunteers – to express our deep gratitude and thanks for all you do every day for all those we serve. 

 

Perhaps one of the silver linings of COVID was the “resourcefulness” it sparked throughout the pandemic to find creative, new ways to keep our longstanding traditions going, while keeping a safe distance. For example, when gatherings were unsafe, we reimagined our annual Service Awards celebration and hosted the last three celebrations safely at the Starlite Drive-In. 

 

Another successful way we adapted our traditions over the past two years was with the introduction of our Honey Baked Ham Co. holiday meal gift, in lieu of in-person meals, which we offered to every team member, physician, and volunteer.

 

And while we no longer need to social distance, given how popular these holiday meal gift certificates have become, we’ve decided to offer them again this year, in partnership with the Honey Baked Ham Co. Once again, you’ll have your choice of a ham, a turkey breast, or two large sides and a pie – perfect for celebrating the holiday season with family and friends. In addition, with COVID transmission rates still low, we also look forward to celebrating a holiday meal together again as a team in our hospitals, ambulatory campuses, and all other sites throughout TriHealth as we approach the Christmas Holiday in December! Stay tuned for more details in my next Weekly Update and on Bridge!

 

While COVID transmission rates remain at relatively low levels, we have seen a slight uptick in new cases in recent weeks. The number of new cases per 100,000 population is now at 96.52/100,000, slightly below the CDC threshold for requiring masks in clinical areas at 100/100,000 population. The graph below shows the case rate trend over the past eight weeks. With case rates now nearing the CDC threshold, we will be keeping a close eye on transmission rates and will provide any updates on changes to clinical masking policies, should the case rate rise and remain above the threshold in the coming weeks. Here at TriHealth, we currently have 28 COVID-positive inpatients with one on a ventilator (see sidebar graphic to far right for details). 

 

As a nation, we celebrate Veterans Day on Friday, November 11. To honor and thank our own veterans, TriHealth and our Employee Resource Group TAGS (TriHealth Armed Forces Group and Supporters) will provide a free lunch voucher to all TriHealth team members who are veterans or who currently serve in the Armed Forces. The voucher can be used on Veterans Day in the hospital cafeterias at Good Samaritan, Bethesda North, Bethesda Butler or McCullough-Hyde. To request your lunch voucher, simply email TAGS@trihealth.com. Additionally, TAGS representatives and TriHealth leadership will be present at Good Sam and Bethesda North cafeterias during Veterans Day to acknowledge and celebrate our TriHealth veterans and active duty team members. To learn more, visit Bridge.

 

And don’t forget, one of the most important ways that each of us can honor our veterans – and all the sacrifices they’ve made to ensure our freedom – is to exercise our right to vote. Election Day is tomorrow, November 8, so be sure to take the time to cast your ballot!

 

We have so much to be grateful for here at TriHealth, and at the top of that list is YOU – our incredible team members!! Thank you for ALL you do to bring The TriHealth Way to life for each other and every individual we serve!