December 20, 2017

Click here to print the PDF

Happy Holidays, Team!   

As we approach the close of another incredible year of growth, progress and building momentum on our journey from Good to Great, I want to thank you for your dedication and commitment to our bold vision and ambitious goals. Thanks to you, we are heading into 2018 stronger than ever and poised to be the best health system in the region! I am combining my holiday message with my Monthly Update to end the year with both a celebration of our remarkable progress and my heartfelt thanks during this special time of the year.

 We are nearing the two-year mark of our system transformation work, and I’m so proud of everything we have accomplished together thus far. Last year, we introduced the TriHealth Way of Leading and have worked to hardwire Leader Rounding, Stop Light Reports, Monthly Department Meetings, Always Behaviors, Nurse Leaders Rounding on patients and a variety of team member recognition and engagement techniques. This year, we have focused on mastering and hardwiring these best practices, making them simply the way—the TriHealth Way – we work together and care for our patients. It’s so inspiring to see our efforts resulting in better patient care, and a better workplace and practice environment for our team members and physicians!

In addition to the encouraging evolution of our TriHealth culture across our more than 140 locations, we’ve also led the way in creating a better healthcare experience for our patients and community.  And we are introducing new clinical programs, more choices and expanded access to better meet our patients’ healthcare needs. Here are just a few of our successes and milestones:

• TriHealth I Xavier 10-Year Partnership: We broke ground on December 11 on the new Health United Building (HUB), a joint venture that includes a fitness and recreation center, health and counseling center, and health sciences academic building.
• Patient Access: We continue to make access a priority with the opening of the new outpatient medical office building and surgery center at our Five Mile Anderson location, starting excavation for the expansion at Western Ridge, purchasing property in Liberty Township for a new ambulatory center, and recruiting more than 60 physicians this year to meet the increasing demand in our community for TriHealth services.
• The TriHealth I Mayfield collaboration: Through a unique partnership with the Mayfield Clinic, we launched our Neuroscience Service Line to deliver unparalleled neurological and stroke care to the Greater Cincinnati community.
• The New Comprehensive Care Center announced with a $10 million gift from Harold and Eugenia Thomas Family: We broke ground on a new four story 140,000-square-foot building on the Bethesda North Campus, which will house integrated and patient centered cancer care, cardiovascular, outpatient imaging service along with Mary Jo Cropper Breast Center under one roof.
• Population Health and Clinical Integration: TriHealth continues to lead the region in population health with our significant growth in attributed lives being cared for through our innovative population health financing and care models. This has been made possible by our investments designed to improve health, such as care management, expanded health screenings, expanding access to care and proactively closing gaps in care. Another key to our success has been our commitment to operate as One System through clinical integration, including the appointment of 18 physician system chiefs; unification of clinical services like hospital medicine and radiology; and the evolution of system service lines (Women’s Health, Musculoskeletal, Cardiovascular, Cancer, Neuroscience, Behavioral Health and Primary Care) and TriHealth Physician Partners.
• Our achievements are being widely recognized: the Joint Commission this month bestowed a disease-specific certification to the cardiac valve repair and replacement program at Good Samaritan Hospital – the first in Ohio and only the third in the U.S. to receive this distinction. Earlier this year, we were the first in the market to receive the Joint Commission Gold Seal Award for advanced total joint replacement and the first in the city to earn system designation of the nursing Magnet award, to name just a few of our recent accolades.  
• The TriHealth Way of Leading (TWOL) is having a noticeable impact: Patient satisfaction, team member engagement and quality and safety outcomes continue to improve, and TriHealth is financially strong and growing, even as the industry is experiencing volume declines and financial challenges elsewhere. The Leadership Development Institutes (LDI) and Physician Leadership Development Institutes (PLDI) have continued through 2017, and have been used to introduce new practices, such as Service Recovery, HighSolidLow, peer interviewing and AIDET +the Promise and other best-practices we rolled out in 2016. And all your hard work to adopt the new practices is paying off – Our 2017 team member engagement scores rose from the 28^th percentile to the 74^th percentile! There is little doubt that our many improvements and growing success are directly related to this higher level of physician and team member commitment, participation and engagement.

With all this momentum, 2018 is certain to bring great things on our journey from good to great through planned improvements and new investments intended to expand access, develop new clinical capabilities, and help physicians and team members collaborate. We’re working harder than ever to get healthcare right for our community – better care, better health and better value for all those we serve – and improve provider and team member satisfaction. And I can’t think of a better way to close out this year – which in many ways has been a “tipping point” for TriHealth – than to say how very proud I am to be a part of this team and how humbled and privileged I am to lead it. As a fully integrated health system and team, there is nothing we can’t achieve together and no success we can’t attain – so here’s to each of YOU for making this year possible.

Thank you for everything you do to make TriHealth a model healthcare system in the region and nation – getting health care right – for our patients and the community we serve!

Happy holidays and best wishes for a prosperous new year!