In the prior entries I reviewed our vision and mission statements, today I want to write about Goals and Pillars As a reminder, our Vision is to Transform Healthcare for the benefit of the people and communities we serve and our Mission is to Heal Compasionately, Teach Innovatively and Improve Constantly. Vision and mission are critical, but the goals are what bind everything together.

Have you ever had fun, or not, making New Year’s resolutions? My experience is that the creation of goals for a new year are most productive and doable when I have a longer view of where I am headed and they are connected to my personal vision and mission. I believe the same principle applies to creating goals for an organization, there is a need for a clear vision and mission.

Here are some questions I ask:

1. What is seeking to emerge? What is supposed to come forth, improve, manifest and to what end?
2. What must I/we become to achieve it?
3. What strengths or assets do I currently possess to accomplish the vision.
4. What has to change or improve or in order for that to happen?

It is with these questions in mind that the annual goals are developed. Again, they can be personal goals or organizational goals, the process is the same.

At GHS we start with the big idea, what we believe will transform how we deliver care and we call that Total Health. Total Health provides the overarching framework for our goals, it is what is seeking to emerge from us, and it sits atop our goals document. The short definition of Total Health is delivering the right care, in the right place at the right time.

As you looked at the Total Health slide, you could see our Pillars, Pillar Statements, and the Measures. We have six Pillars: People, Service, Quality, Growth, Finance and Academics. These are our areas of focus. I believe we have created a culture of measurement and improvement and the goals drive that improvement. I also think the more open we are about discussing our goals increases the likelihood of success.

As you look over the goals under the pillars a couple of things may emerge. First, when there is national benchmark available we compare ourselves against how others are doing. Second, we want to be a best performer so we strive to be in the top quartile – meaning we want to do better than 75% of all the hospitals we compare ourselves to. For some measures that is a stretch and for others, like Employee Commitment and Quality, we are in the top 10%. Another thing to note is that we are moving more towards multi-year goals. I will come back to multi-year goals in a future entry and why I think they are important. I will also share my personal goals.

I welcome any thoughts, comments or blurts about these goals. I plan to discuss them in more detail in the future, as well as my personal goals.

Some things are worth blogging about. I have copied an email that I sent out earlier today and I think it says a lot and is worth celebrating.

To: GHS Physicians and Staff

For the second consecutive year, GHS specialty programs have been ranked in the US News and World Report 2010-2011 edition of America’s Best Hospitals. The list contains rankings of the top 50 hospitals in 16 different specialties. Greenville Memorial Hospital is one of only 152 U.S. hospitals to appear on this year’s rankings. The following GMH programs have been named:

• Diabetes and Endocrine Disorders (#25)
• Gastroenterology (#39 in category)
• Heart and Heart Surgery (#45)

We also ranked #5 in the country for lowest rate of readmissions and received a 2010 Silver Achievement Award for Coronary Arty Disease/Congestive Heart Failure//Stroke.

US News and World Report uses a data-driven ranking methodology to assess four specific components: reputation, death rate, patient safety (new this year), and care-related factors such as nursing and patient services. Hospitals have to pass through several “gates” to be ranked and considered a Best Hospital. These include (in the following sequence) hospital eligibility, specialty program eligibility, and then specific specialty assessments based on the components referenced above.

GMH and MUSC are the only South Carolina hospitals to be named in these rankings. As mentioned above, this is also the second year that any GHS specialty has been ranked among the top 50 in any specialty program. We also ranked #5 in the country for lowest rate of readmissions and received a 2010 Silver Achievement Award for Coronary Artery Disease/Congestive Heart Failure/Stroke..

These rankings are a significant achievement for the ranked specialty areas and I congratulate the physicians and staff in each of these areas. In many ways, these rankings also reflect on our system as a whole including our network of hospitals, physicians practices and especially our highly dedicated teams of physicians, nurses, allied health and other professionals and staff who demonstrate their commitment to excellence in patient care, safety and service in their work every single day.

Thank you for the work you do to support the operations and achievements of our organization. Our vision calls on us to transform health care for the benefit of the people and communities we serve. This type of recognition is a great reminder that we are making important strides toward this vision.

As always, I welcome your thoughts and comments about these results.

Michael C. Riordan
President and CEO

Here are some additional links that may be of interest:
http://www.ghs.org/news.aspx?id=90404
http://blogs.webmd.com/breaking-news/2010/07/the-best-hospitals-in-the-u-s.html
http://health.usnews.com/best-hospitals/rankings.

Transform health care for the benefit of the people and communities we serve. What does it mean to me and how to get there? That is what I want to write about today, well, at least the first half, the what does it mean part. Let me start out by acknowledging the word transform may bring up lots of thoughts and emotions. The idea of change can be feared if the current situation works well and it can be eagerly anticipated if there is a desire for something different. As I talk to internal and external audiences about our vision, I acknowledge the debate around health care has been going on for decades. This past year the debate has been intense and it looks as if that may continue for the months and years to come. I often mention that transform is neither a democratic or republican word and just because it rhymes with reform does not make it synonymous. If you have an interest in reading more about reform, I have added a link to a presentation I did for the Board and employees at GHS that was based on information created by the South Carolina Hospital Association, American Hospital Association and the Association of American Medical Colleges. For more information on those associations take a look at the right hand side of my blog.

I think we need to transform regardless of what the government does. In fact, a big part of writing this blog is to create the space to have that conversation. The new legislation contains some significant changes, particularly in the next five years, and we will have to adapt to those changes or transform. However, we have an opportunity, a calling to transform many other aspects of health care to benefit the people and communities we serve. How we engage patients and families can change without a law. How we train the next generation of physicians, nurses and other care givers can change with an eye to the future. How we engage the community can and will change. And, most importantly, how we train physician and administrative leaders can impact the present and the future.

We will live up to this vision and transformation by accomplishing our mission. We have a simple, powerful mission statement that was adopted at the same time we changed our vision statement. Heal Compassionately, Teach Innovatively, and Improve Constantly. I will start the how we get there conversation in an upcoming entry. In the meantime, I welcome your thoughts, comments or blurts about transforming health care.