Multi-topic

Good morning!

Today, I want to cover a handful of topics.

To start, I’d like to remind you to send your New Year’s resolutions to the VC Notes inbox. I’ve gotten some good ones so far, and I’d like to see more. If you’re having trouble coming up with a resolution for your personal or professional life or something you think is a good resolution for the Medical Center institutionally, Wikipedia to the rescue. Wiki refers to New Year’s resolutions as when “a person resolves to continue good practices, change an undesired trait or behavior, accomplish a personal goal, or otherwise improve their behavior.” That provides pretty helpful guidelines. I look forward to reading more of your submissions.

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On Monday, UMMC Health System employees received an email that included a personalized link to the 2024 Culture of Safety Survey. Please complete this by the Feb. 12 deadline. As was confirmed last year with our fantastic and fully deserved Leapfrog grades – A for UMMC Grenada and B for University Hospital, including all the Jackson-based care towers – we are making strides on our journey to a high-reliability organization. The feedback you provide through the survey will help us identify our safety culture’s strengths and weaknesses and will inform clinical leadership of your perception of the effectiveness of our patient safety programs, initiatives and other efforts. All of this can be succinctly called our “culture of safety,” and we want to shape this culture to benefit our patients and help make this a great place to work. And remember, the survey is completely confidential.

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An update on something I mentioned in a past VC Notes – improving food services. Last fall, we issued a request for proposals to solicit competitive bids from vendors who wish to be our food and nutrition vendor, including patient food and the cafeterias. We received several strong proposals, and an executive committee has been going through the many steps involved in the process needed to get to one final pick. Then, the contract negotiation phase kicks off, which is expected to be as complicated as is the responsibility of providing high-quality food for an institution as large as ours. Once a final agreement is reached, it will need to be approved by the IHL Board of Trustees. This is a protracted process but necessary to yield a food services vendor that we believe will reach and maintain the standards we think you, our patients, their families and visitors deserve.

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We are in the fourth week of the four-month legislative session, and leaders in the House and Senate have announced committee chairs and members. Bills are beginning to be introduced and referred for action. Notably, we have a new Speaker of the House, Rep. Jason White, and a few new chairs in key committees like Medicaid, Public Health, Appropriations and Universities and Colleges whom we are looking forward to working with.

We expect a lot of focus and movement on health care-related issues this session, including Medicaid services and prior authorization and other insurance reforms.

Of course, we will be tracking the status of state appropriations, which in our case are essential to our education mission.

As a reminder, there is a process to follow prior to participating in any activities related to government or elected officials. Unless special permission is granted in advance by the Office of the Vice Chancellor, only members of our government relations team are authorized to conduct advocacy activities with elected/appointed government officials on behalf of UMMC. This applies to both the state and federal level.

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And last but certainly not least, I want to echo some of the comments I made in last week’s ceremony honoring the Medical Center’s newest endowed chair, Dr. Thomas Dobbs. In addition to being dean of the John D. Bower School of Population Health, he is now the Chair for the Study of Health Disparities. I can think of no one more qualified for this very important role, made possible through an endowment initiated by the Jackson Medical Mall Foundation in 2005. An Alabama native, Dr. Dobbs has immersed himself into his new home since he arrived more than 20 years ago and committed himself to understanding our state, its people and the many health challenges they face. He was great in his previous job as the State Health Officer – especially during COVID – but we are glad and honored that he’s now a part of our faculty and family.

Congrats, Thomas! This type of community support and partnership is vitally important if we are to reach our goal of A Healthier Mississippi.