November 21, 2023
Hi Team –
Well, the anticipation and building excitement for the holiday season is officially upon us, as we prepare for Thanksgiving on Thursday, followed by a month of celebrations and special traditions leading up to Hanukkah, Christmas, and Kwanzaa. However you choose to enjoy the holiday season, I hope it’s filled with lots of love, gratitude, good health and goodwill!
Here at TriHealth, we are excited to play a part in helping to celebrate the season in some special ways – including sharing a tasty holiday meal with your family from The Honey Baked Ham Co., compliments of TriHealth! Last week, you received an email from The Honey Baked Ham Co. containing your personalized QR code for a choice of a free ham, a turkey breast or two large sides and a pie. Didn’t get the email? No problem! Visit Bridge for instructions on how to access and redeem your gift certificate.
Getting Healthcare Right
Recap of 27th Leadership Development Institute
Last Wednesday, our 800+ leaders gathered at the Northern Kentucky Convention Center for our 27th Leadership Development Institute (LDI). Themed Accelerating to Excellence: Investing in our People and Our Patients to Deliver on Our Promise of Surprisingly Human Care, the LDI focused on strengthening and hardwiring TriHealth Way practices and behaviors around selection, onboarding, and retention – all to ultimately support our efforts to “Get Staffing Right.”Why the focus on staffing? Because foundational for delivering “surprisingly human care” that results in exceptional outcomes, always is the right staffing with the right engagement around the right vision. And without question, staffing is one of today’s most pressing challenges…particularly in healthcare, where demand for healthcare workers is far outpacing supply. As an example, more than 100,000 nurses have left the workforce since the onset of COVID, and nearly one-third of nurses say they may leave direct patient care in the next year – which means this is not simply a recruiting challenge, but also one of retention.
So, at LDI, our leaders came together to reimagine, remaster, and “rewire” our system’s approach to recruiting, onboarding, engagement and retention to ensure our practices and behaviors reflect the new post-COVID realities of the healthcare talent landscape. Through hands-on, scenario-based skill development sessions, our leaders sharpened their behavioral interviewing skills. And with a renewed focus on peer interviewing, our frontline team members will play an even more important role in the selection, hiring, and onboarding process – serving in many ways as guardians for our TriHealth Way culture.
We capped off our 27th LDI by recognizing and celebrating many of our TriHealth leaders and their teams with Pillar and Ax Awards in recognition of their exceptional performance in leading the way in Getting Healthcare Right. Receiving the Florence Nightingale Ax Award – an award recognizing transformational change and improvements in quality and safety – were the members of the TriHealth Stroke Team for their remarkable leadership in elevating stroke care throughout our system.
Since 2018, this team has worked tirelessly to:
- Achieve stroke designation for all TriHealth hospitals and Emergency Departments
- Adopt and hardwire evidence-based clinical guidelines, and
- Reduce “door to needle” or intervention times to dramatically improve clinical outcomes
And because of this amazing work, TriHealth is now consistently outperforming American Heart Association (AHA) standards, as evidenced by the AHA Quality Awards we received this year for excellence in Stroke Care. And this has resulted in TriHealth becoming the highest quality and most preferred Stroke Care provider in the region and an industry leader nationally!! A BIG shout out to Drs. Andy Ringer and Chris Zammit for leading the way to excellence, and once again, enabling TriHealth to deliver surprisingly human care to drive exceptional health outcomes!! Click here to view pictures of all the leaders receiving Pillar and Ax awards.
Your leaders will be in touch soon to share what they learned and how they will be actively assisting you as we remaster our foundational TriHealth Way best practices, together.
Month in Review: Strong and Encouraging November, but Challenges Persist
Due to the shortened Thanksgiving holiday week, we made the decision to cancel our November Team Member Town Hall. However, we didn’t want to miss the opportunity to share important news and celebrate the encouraging progress from the past month, as part of our journey to take TriHealth from Good to Great. The following is a recap of some of the highlights...
Pillar Goal Performance: In the past month, we saw encouraging progress with many of our Pillar Goals, as well as continued challenges with others, as we work to improve our performance for those we serve and those who serve:
- In Safety/Quality/Population Health, we achieved continued reductions in Falls with Harm. And for the third month in a row, Care Consolidation exceeded monthly target goals!
- As shared above in our LDI recap, we continue to experience, and are working through, workforce and labor shortages, which are adversely impacting new hire turnover and leadership diverse hiring performance. However, coming out of this LDI, we are confident we have the right plan with the right leadership focus around hiring and retention and expect to see improving results in the coming months.
- In the Service Pillar, we are achieving goal/target for HCAHPS. And while we are lagging target for EDCAHPS, CGCAHPS and OASCAHPS, we are encouraged by the steady improvement we are now seeing month over month with patient experience in our emergency departments, physician practices, and the ambulatory procedure areas, such as the Endoscopy Center, Bethesda Surgery Center, Surgery West, etc.
- And with our Finance and Growth Pillars, thanks to a strong September coupled with encouraging performance in October, our net operating revenue continues to grow and we are now approaching our year-over-year goal for volume and revenue growth. At the same time, our New Patient Access Growth goal tied to our population health work exceeded target with more than 14,000 new patient appointments made in October! And our year-to-date positive operating margin – while slightly lagging our ambitious budget – is moving in the right direction, and we too expect to achieve this goal by year end.
Investments in Our People and Facilities: Through our ongoing investments in our people and our facilities, we experienced a number of wins over the past month, including:
- Dr. Kristin Coppage being named Associate Chief Medical Officer for the Good Samaritan Region (click here for details).
- The promotion of Ellen Beckett to the new role of Vice President of HR Business Partners and Team Member Relations (click here for details).
- Investing nearly $20M in 800 new inpatient beds across our four hospitals to improve patient care, patient satisfaction, and team member satisfaction (click here for details).
- Continuing development and investments in our high-value network of hospitals, ambulatory campuses and physician practices, including on the campuses of our flagship hospitals, Bethesda North and Good Samaritan (click here for details).
Jeremiah Kirkland Receives 2023 “Man of Honor Award” 
Last Saturday, I had the honor of joining many TriHealth leaders and team members at the 2023 Men of Honor Awards Ceremony to cheer on our very own Jeremiah Kirkland, TriHealth President and Chief Operating Officer, Bethesda Butler Hospital, who was one of just five honorees and the youngest ever to be recognized! The Men of Honor awards recognize the “lifetime” accomplishments of extraordinary African American men who have succeeded against all odds and made a positive and enduring impact on our community. Jeremiah follows two other accomplished African American physicians and leaders in the TriHealth system who were previously recognized, Dr. Robert Collins, TriHealth Board Trustee, and Dr. Thomas Shockley, Associate CMO and Chief Health Equity Officer. Congratulations to Jeremiah on this well-deserved community recognition of his outstanding achievements and values-led commitment to SERVE!!
Don’t Miss Your Chance to Cheer on the Bengals from the TriHealth Suite, Dec. 10
While the outcome of last Thursday’s Bengals game was disappointing, the team is still in the mix for a run to the playoffs. And we want you to be there to cheer them on to victory! So, I’m excited to share that we are, once again, giving team members and physicians the opportunity to enter a random drawing to win a pair of suite tickets to the December 10 Bengals game versus the Indianapolis Colts! Eight lucky winners and their guests will enjoy the game in style, hosted by TriHealth! For your chance to win, simply complete this contest entry form. In the spirit of the Thanksgiving season, this is just one more way for TriHealth to express our gratitude and appreciation to you, the very best healthcare team anywhere!! And the “gratitude” giveaways won’t end with the football season! With Major League Baseball Spring Training just around the corner, we will again be providing all TriHealth team members with two tickets to a Reds game at Great American Ball Park during the 2024 season!!Happy Thanksgiving and Thank You!
And speaking of gratitude, as we head into the Thanksgiving holiday on Thursday, I want to take this opportunity to pause and reflect on the many blessings I am personally grateful for this year. And at the top of my list are family, friends, and YOU, our incredible TriHealth Team!! Thanks to you – our 13,000 extraordinary team members, physicians, and volunteers – we are bringing our brand promise of “surprisingly human care” to life for every patient we serve, every day...and it’s making a difference and our community is taking note!! Today, our patients are healthier, care is safer, more accessible and more affordable, and our patient experience is more satisfying. That is what Getting Healthcare Right is all about and NO ONE does it better than you, our TriHealth Team!!
I want to wish you and your family a blessed, healthy, and Happy Thanksgiving! And for those called upon to work this long holiday weekend, a BIG “THANK YOU” for your sacrifice for those we serve!
Thanks for the HoneyBaked Ham coupon again this year. That is a really nice gift that I think everyone can use themselves or share. Much appreciated. Mary Moeller
Posted by: Mary Moeller on November 25, 2023
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Happy Thanksgiving!
Posted by: Angela Flamm on November 23, 2023
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