November 01, 2016

Hi Team –

Happy Halloween! Today we celebrate Halloween, and at TriHealth, it is a day marked with lots of “treats” to share and give thanks for as we continue to make encouraging progress in our work to adapt to the fundamental changes occurring in health care – truly a journey from good to great! Following are a few highlights...

• TriHealth recognized as one of the “100 Best Companies” by Working Mother magazine for the 8th year in a row (12 times overall) – only 9 hospitals/health systems in nation recognized!

• TriHealth Evendale and Bethesda Butler achieved top decile patient experience ratings in first quarter

• New Dearborn County Hospital/TriHealth Medicine Program launched

• Good Samaritan Free Health Center recognized by Catholic Charities of Southwest Ohio (a United Way Agency Partner) as “Champions of Mercy”

• Dr. Laura Trice, President of the TriHealth Physician Hospital Organization (PHO), received the “Most Powerful & Influential Woman Award” from the National Diversity Council

• TriHealth United Way Campaign to-date has raised more than $525,000 on the way to our goal of $600,000 – THANK YOU TEAM!!

Team Members Recognized for Dedicated Service to TriHealth and Our Patients. On October 21st at the Cintas Center, I was honored to be a part of our annual Service Awards Dinner to recognize the accomplishments and commitment of our long-tenured team members who were celebrating milestones of 20, 25, 30, 35, 40 and 45 years of service to TriHealth, our patients and the community we serve. While I am impressed by so many things about TriHealth, without a doubt, the extraordinary commitment of our people – to our patients, each other and our community – is at the top of the list! Congratulations to the hundreds of team members honored on the 21st, and thank you for all you do to make TriHealth great!

Dearborn County Hospital Medicine Program Launched. Since our affiliation with Dearborn County Hospital (DCH) was formalized in January, we’ve made significant progress to bring Dearborn County residents an expanded range of world-class specialty and subspecialty care closer to home in their own community. The latest example is the October launch of the DCH/TriHealth Hospital Medicine Program, which now offers inpatients at DCH the same hospital medicine care provided in our TriHealth hospitals. A special thank you to Dr. Bryan Strader, Medical Director of Hospital Medicine at Bethesda North, and our hospitalists for expertly organizing and implementing this new and critically important program at DCH in record time!!! We are excited about the many benefits this new hospitalist program will bring to patient care, access, quality and health outcomes for the residents of Dearborn County.

New Realities Conversations with Team Members Begin Next Month. As we shared at our Fall Forums, starting in November and continuing into January 2017, we will be engaging our more than 12,000 TriHealth team members in small group “New Health Care Realities Conversations.” These sessions – facilitated by our own TriHealth leaders – will provide our team members the opportunity to learn more about the rapidly changing health care environment, along with the why, what and how of our transformation. Most importantly, they will explain the important role you, our team members, will play as we accelerate our work to become a fully integrated, high performing system. I encourage you to be an active participant in these candid, dynamic sessions – and look forward to hearing what you think.

Operational Excellence Initiative in Place to Prepare for “New Health Care Realities.” Last month, I provided an update on our Operational Excellence initiative that’s underway to enable TriHealth to maintain its position of strength during this time of growing industry challenges. It’s also designed to help TriHealth successfully transition from a volume-based payment model to a value-based model (designed to achieve the triple aim of improved care, improved health and reduced costs). Because of the importance and large scope of this effort, we are creating a dedicated “Operational Excellence” section on LinkNet, along with a new monthly update, to provide you with regular progress reports on our work underway, as well as what’s ahead. Look for the launch of these new tools next month.

Thank you for all you do to SERVE our patients, family members and each other, every day!