Becoming Strategic Partners
Dr. Mok’s Notes July 2008
The Children’s Hospital is celebrating its centennial year. One hundred years of taking care of children creates a lot of history, and it’s interesting to recall how the first hospital tents near City Park have evolved into The new Children's Hospital.
It’s even more engaging to think about what the next 100 years might hold for this essential community resource that serves the entire Rocky Mountain West.
With that in mind, the medical staff, employees, Board of Directors and leadership of The Children’s Hospital have recently completed a strategic plan to move us into the next century of service to the health of children. This is an invitation to become a strategic partner in creating what children deserve—an integrated, efficient and effective system to keep them well and return them to health when they get sick.
Every strategic planning process must first have a clear vision of the mission to be accomplished if it hopes to be a successful plan and not just a time consuming exercise. The Children’s Hospital sees itself as an organization, in partnership with all those working in the cause of children’s health, becoming a driving force to provide a system of healthcare that includes high quality patient care, education, research and advocacy. Now there is a reason to get up every morning to attack the day!
Key elements in the new strategic plan include:
- Operational and service excellence: All the programs at the hospital will be held to the highest standards of competence, and reliable measures will be used to monitor outcomes and patient/family/referring clinician satisfaction.
- Innovation and discovery: Ambitious plans are under way to generate sufficient endowments and grants to continue to increase the superior ranking of The Children's Hospital among national health research institutions for children.
- Clinical growth: Every program at the hospital has been reviewed to determine its critical contribution to the goal of improving the health of children, and special emphasis will be placed on some programs to move them into national prominence. The distribution of services off the main campus will be designed to expand our outreach beyond the hospital walls in the most coordinated fashion possible.
- Faculty support: Many initiatives have been undertaken to recruit and retain top-notch full-time faculty to increase access, expand network of care services and strengthen research programs.
- Community clinician alignment: Your invitation to become a strategic partner.
The last point is where you come in. There would not have been a 100 years of TCH history without the involvement and dedication of community clinicians who we now know are the builders of the medical home for every child.
Building partnerships
How will you contribute to the next 100 years? Here are some ideas to flesh out "community clinician alignment" as part of The Children's Hospital Strategic Plan:
- Participate in the emerging effort in our region to establish an integrated health record for every child. As electronic data capture increases in healthcare, there are opportunities to share critical information confidentially to improve children’s health. The Children's Hospital will sponsor efforts to interface and eventually integrate health information. The record will be patient-centric and will allow quality improvement for individuals and populations.
- Support the Colorado Immunization Registry, which has already helped to improve our ranking nationally in immunization rates for kids.
- Help design the most effective methods for you to continue your medical education and maintain competence. The Children's Hospital has the ability to provide on-site and remote CME opportunities on a regular basis. We need your input on formats, times and topics. New CME requirements will demand evidence of impact on patient outcomes, which means critical feedback from you on how your practice changed after a learning opportunity.
- Stay connected to The Children's Hospital through committee service, program advisory groups and local discussions with hospital leadership. Tell us where and when you want to meet, and we will be there.
- Most importantly, tell us every time things don’t work. We will monitor the communication on every inpatient and outpatient, but getting to perfection will require your feedback. We will trend every concern you register and make sure senior leaders know what’s happening in real time. Part of your role in the strategic plan means you have to provide opportunities for the hospital to improve, and we want to hear from you.
Thank you for your support of The Children’s Hospital over the last century—let’s make it another 100 years together.
Contact Dr. Mokrohisky at mokrohisky.stefan@tchden.org or at 720-777-6130.
