July 31, 2018
Hi Team!
Happy New Year!! July marks the start of Fiscal Year 2019 (FY19), and we’ve kicked off the year with a set of forward-looking strategic initiatives and bold system goals which will continue to advance and accelerate our important work to get health care right during this time of industry change and emerging new challenges. Following are highlights of our latest progress on our journey to bring better care, better health, and better value to all those we serve.
Wins
- TriHealth recognized as one of the 2018 Top 52 Great Health Systems to Know by Becker’s Hospital Review.
- Bethesda North Hospital Trauma Program re-verified as a Level III Trauma Center by the American College of Surgeons – only one in Hamilton County!
- TriHealth’s A+ credit rating reaffirmed by Standard & Poor’s with a stable outlook during a time when credit agencies are predicting downgrades to outweigh upgrades for U.S. health care companies in 2018!
- TriHealth exceeded its 2018 budget – an important win because it enables us to fund our future and the necessary investments in our vision. Even more impressive when considering that health care bankruptcies in the U.S. more than tripled in 2017.
Building an Engaged, High Performing Team through Our Shared Vision
Last month, I devoted my June Update to sharing highlights of our TriHealth Annual Plan, including Strategic Initiatives and Pillar Goals. It was pointed out that major market forces – such as growing consumerism, technological innovation, non-traditional competitors, and the shift to value-based accountable care – are reshaping our industry and transforming traditional health care financing and care delivery models. Our FY19 Annual Plan continues, and in many ways, intensifies our work in the areas of Patient Safety & Clinical Quality, Consumerism & Convenience, Population Health Management, and Team/Leader Diversity and Inclusion. And I’ve asked all leaders to fully engage our entire TriHealth team in these plans over the next couple of months to help you fully understand the new realities we face, what we’re doing in response, and most importantly, the vital role we all will play in accelerating this work in the year ahead. Stay tuned for more from your leaders in the coming weeks – as well as regular progress reports on our Pillar Goals and Strategic Initiatives from me in future Monthly Updates and Team Member Forums.
TriHealth Way of Delivering Care – Reliability and Safety – Builds Momentum at July LDI
Just last week, we completed our 9th quarterly Leadership Development Institute (LDI) with nearly 1,000 TriHealth leaders, board members, and physicians in attendance. At this LDI, we continued the work of introducing safety and reliability practices, ranging from Safety Huddles in every department, to opening all meetings with a safety story/message, to incorporating safety in every decision. Your leader will be sharing more detail about these exciting safety practices in the coming weeks.
Given the importance of supporting our more than 12,000 team members and physicians in this work -- across our more than 130 TriHealth sites of care – we announced the planned launch of the new TriHealth Institute for Safety, Reliability & Clinical Transformation at the LDI. Led by system Chief Medical Officer, Dr. Kevin Joseph, the Institute will serve as the organizing structure with the dedicated, new resources necessary to support and sustain our system-wide journey to Zero Harm. Plans call for adding resources in the areas of Lean, team member and patient safety, infection prevention, root cause analysis, and much more. And while this work is initially being rolled out to our leaders over the summer – it does not stop there! Ensuring our patients consistently receive the safest, highest quality care is everyone’s responsibility! So this fall through year-end, we’ll be conducting system-wide training on safety and reliability for all team members, which you’ll learn more about in August.
Engagement Survey Results Highlight Sustained Improvement and New Opportunities
This month, we received the tabulated results of our annual engagement surveys for TriHealth Team Members, Medical Staff, and our TriHealth Physician Partners group (TPP). I’m pleased to share that we held much of the improvement or gains from 2016, and that our overall results remain well above national averages across all three surveys. The results also underscore opportunities for continued improvement, and express the belief of our physicians and team members that we are poised for strong progress in 2019.
In a future communication, I’ll provide more specifics about TriHealth’s overall results and insights for continued improvement. In the coming weeks, your leaders will review the results from your area and show you how they compare to TriHealth and national averages. And over the next several months, we’ll be working with you – our team members and physicians – to develop and implement customized improvement action plans, at system and department levels, to reinforce what’s working well and continue to strengthen and enhance areas needing improvement.
Collectively, all of these initiatives—team members engagement, bold system goals and strategic initiatives, and patient safety—are working in tandem to help us achieve our vision to be the preferred health system where people want to work, where physicians want to practice, and most importantly, where the community wants to go when they need the best quality, service, safety, and value in health care. Thank you for all you are doing to help us make this vision a proud reality!
As we look ahead to August, I hope you are able to find the time to make the most of the last half of summer – it will be gone before we know it! One great way to do this is to be sure to join us for our Annual TriHealth Team Member & Family Picnic taking place on Sunday, August 26 at Coney Island Amusement Park & Picnic Grove. Registration takes place today, July 31 through Aug. 21. You must register to attend, click here to sign up.
I look forward to seeing you at Coney!!!
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