Despite Pandemic, Our Mission Goes On
Good morning!
Our world has been pretty much wall-to-wall COVID-19 for going on 10 months now, and we are all ready for this to be over. As we anticipate administering vaccine to members of our own workforce beginning NEXT WEEK, there is a glimmer of hope that we are entering the beginning of the end of this pandemic.
The prospect of returning to some sense of normalcy, coupled with the closeout of the 2020 calendar year, has me taking stock of the progress we’ve made toward our strategic priorities during the last 12 months. I know you’re probably thinking, “What strategic priorities?” We’ve been so immersed in responding to the pandemic, both at work and at home, that our organizational goals have, to some extent, become an afterthought.
But as I check in with people and groups across UMMC, I’ve been impressed that even with COVID-19 still center stage, we are making steady progress on a number of fronts. This is encouraging, and will take on additional significance early next year when we finalize UMMC’s new strategic plan for the next five years.
As a reminder, below are our top five strategic priorities for the current fiscal/academic year. These have been fairly consistent over the last few years and will remain important in our future plan:
- Clinical quality improvement
- Strategic engagement with other health systems
- Expansion of Children’s of Mississippi and key adult services
- Growth of strategic research programs and partnerships
- Academic growth guided by workforce needs
Keep in mind that while these are our top priorities, that’s not to say other things not on this list aren’t also important. But I find it helpful to be able to focus on what is most important to avoid being sidetracked.
Moreover, if you read these top five priorities carefully, you can see that there is a lot packed into this short list. They encompass each of our three mission areas and, with those, our commitment to the ideals of service; diversity and inclusion; alleviating health disparities; and other core values.
My purpose today isn’t to provide an exhaustive account of our progress toward these priorities, but I do want to touch on a few highlights from the previous fiscal year.
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Clinical Quality Improvement
Although the priorities noted above are not ranked in any order, you could argue that without clinical quality, not much else matters.
To my thinking, FY20 marked the completion of Phase 1 of our journey toward clinical quality improvement. Under Dr. Michael Henderson’s leadership as chief medical officer and unwavering support from Dr. Charles O’Mara as associate vice chancellor for clinical affairs, we have installed the building blocks of performance improvement: the staffing, data collection and evaluative processes, training and communications. You could call it the beginning of a culture of continuous improvement.
During this phase, among other achievements, we’ve driven marked improvement in hand hygiene compliance and a corresponding decrease in hospital-acquired infections; we’ve increased reporting of harm events; we’ve reduced the 30-day readmission rate; and we’ve seen improvement in the reported experience of our patients.
In Phase 2, we’ll be working to consolidate and build on these gains with an increased focus on our patients – their safety, clinical outcomes and overall experience. A second focus area will be value: continued performance improvement – particularly documentation, coding and reporting – while identifying and removing costs that don’t add value. There is an organizational readiness for Phase 2 and I am most excited about this.
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Strategic Engagement with Other Health Systems
With the pandemic dominating the second half of FY20, we’ve had less time to devote to cultivating our relationships with two premier academic medical centers, Mayo Clinic and Vanderbilt University Medical Center. But opportunities exist in all three mission areas, with an initial focus on clinical trials, supply chain management, biobank, specialty pharmacy, telehealth and resident education.
Formal UMMC affiliations with Mississippi-area hospitals now include Anderson Regional Medical Center in Meridian, Oktibbeha County Hospital in Starkville, Memorial Hospital in Gulfport and our newest affiliate hospital, added in FY20, Southwest Health System in McComb. We recently signed an affiliation agreement with Louisiana-based Vantage Health, which includes a large, multispecialty group practice in Monroe, Louisiana. UMMC cardiologists began seeing patients at OCH in 2020. More limited collaborations in clinical and educational areas are in place with Baptist Jackson and St. Dominic’s.
We continued to foster our relationship with Hattiesburg Clinic, the state’s largest private multispecialty group practice. Again, though we’ve all been preoccupied with COVID-19, we recently completed an 18-month contract with the clinic to assist us in implementing an Epic population health module and a robust care management platform, areas where the clinic has demonstrated national leadership.
Our joint venture with Merit Health Madison, completed in FY19, resulted in more than 1,000 surgical cases and related post-operative care to patients last year. This arrangement had the desired effect of reducing stress on our ORs and med-surg beds at UMMC.
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Clinical Services Expansion
Plans for the expansion of key adult services have been limited by the pandemic, and we will be refining those plans as part of the current strategic planning process. Some notable exceptions: The Department of Dermatology established the Skin Cancer Center at the Township in Ridgeland. The center is adjacent to the department’s Face and Skin Center in the same development. And the UMMC Cancer Center and Research Institute opened an outpatient clinic for cancer care and infusion services at UMMC Grenada.
Children’s of Mississippi added cardiologists to its clinical staff in Tupelo and on the Gulf Coast, as well as a pediatric intensivist in Tupelo in affiliation with North Mississippi Medical Center. Children’s also assumed responsibility for pediatric inpatient coverage and for managing the Level II neonatal intensive care unit at Delta Health-The Medical Center in Greenville.
Overshadowing everything, of course, is the new $180 million Kathy and Joe Sanderson Tower at Children’s of Mississippi. The new tower, which opened to patients the week of Nov. 2, was years in the making and will be transformational in the care and service we are able to provide to the children of Mississippi.
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Strategic Research Programs/Partnerships
As has been detailed in eCV and in this column, our researchers had a banner year in FY20 and seem poised to eclipse that this year. UMMC Sponsored Programs recorded $82.3 million in funding last year, just shy of the $85 million record. In only the first three months of FY21, the research enterprise generated $39 million in sponsored funding, on pace to shatter previous marks.
Although much of the construction work occurred in FY19, last year saw the opening of the Clinical Research and Trials Unit within University Hospital. With 22 inpatient/outpatient rooms, an infusion center and other resources, the unit represents an $8 million strategic investment in our ability to conduct clinical research. Much of the planning for this unit was completed in tandem with research leaders from the Mayo Clinic so we would have the ability to conduct trials jointly with that institution.
Among other notable research achievements from FY20, UMMC…
- Implemented a National Institutes of Health-funded training program for clinical research coordinators and support staff in coordination with the Mayo Clinic and Penn State University. More than 100 UMMC employees completed the certification process in FY20.
- Combined UMMC’s expertise in Alzheimer’s disease and brain imaging in the Mississippi-Mayo Clinic Study of Aging, which began recruiting participants in FY20.
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Academic Growth
Enrollment in all UMMC academic programs grew substantially in the transition from the 2019-20 to 2020-21 academic years, from 2,815 to 3,017 learners – a seven percent increase. More than half of that growth occurred in the School of Nursing, especially with the expansion of accelerated degree programs. This is a good thing, since UMMC, Mississippi and most of the country is experiencing a severe shortage of nurses, and accelerated programs are the quickest way to get credentialed nurses into the field.
We’ve also added new programs to respond to workforce demand. The School of Health Related Professions developed its medical scribe program to assist clinicians with documenting in the electronic health record. SHRP also created a histotechnology program to supply more of these hard-to-find laboratory professionals. The School of Graduate Studies in the Health Sciences began the Ph.D. in Biomedical Sciences Bioimaging Track, which is integrated into the radiology residency program. The program enrolled its first student last year and currently has two student/residents in the track.
Finally, Continuing Health Professional Education launched CE Central, an online platform that streamlined submission of CE applications; data collection and reporting; and administration of post-event evaluations. This was a huge undertaking that will greatly enhance the functioning of our continuing education offerings.
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Please remember, this “highlights” list doesn’t begin to fully reflect all that was done and is being done to move us forward DESPITE the presence of this seemingly all-consuming pandemic.
This is the 300th edition of VC Notes since I have been vice chancellor. (Not that I am counting.) I honestly wasn’t certain we could keep up a weekly column back when it started in March 2015. However, it seems there are always topics, stories and information to share.
Most of all, I want this weekly column to be worth your time to read. Many ideas for column topics come from you – your questions, your feedback, your emails, etc. Keep them coming!
I’m grateful for your commitment and your unquenchable resolve that whatever comes at us, our mission and the work that supports it goes on. #UMMCStrong
