5 New Year’s Resolutions for Healthcare Systems

With the turn of the New Year, improving personal health inevitably comes into focus. Resolutions to enhance physical fitness, boost mental health, lose weight and improve diet topped the list for 2024 in a recent survey of 1,000 Americans conducted by Forbes Health/One Poll. There’s something about the energy of a fresh start?in January that makes changing even entrenched health behaviors a little more doable.?

New Year’s resolutions are great examples of positive thinking – confidence and trust that things can improve and optimism that you have what it takes to get it done.?

But just as millions of American are resolved this new year to improve their health, we healthcare providers should take our cues from the public and also make some changes that lead to healthier outcomes – both for our valued patients, and for the health systems we lead that support our communities.?

Here’s our best advice for 2024 from University Hospitals to help make that happen:?

1. Regularly remind your employees how much they’re valued. Working in healthcare has perhaps never been more difficult. We at UH ease the strain with a daily e-newsletter with self-care tips to build resilience among our caregivers, highlighting resources across our system for music therapy, meditation, massage and other helpful modalities to reduce stress. I also make it a priority to regularly recognize our caregivers who are going above and beyond in living our UH values or making an extraordinary contribution to patient care at UH.?

2. Make life easier for patients – being ill is hard enough. To accomplish this, we have streamlined the process of scheduling an appointment to allow greater flexibility to schedule via MyChart app, phone and text. In conjunction with our Centralized Scheduling team, we have even developed a Referral Management Center to be the primary point of scheduling in transitions of care. They have access and the ability to schedule for the vast majority of UH services, providing a single point of contact for patients. Our goal is exemplary, five-star customer service with every interaction, with all the features people expect from online shopping or banking or even booking a restaurant reservation on the first call.?

3. Embrace the idea of middle and high schools as sources of potential employees for the future. They are an essential piece in solving the healthcare workforce shortage puzzle, and therefore a critical element for us in continuing to provide high-quality care to patients. UH Health Scholars, for example, is a five-year educational opportunity for under-represented, minority Cleveland-area students who are in eighth grade through college freshmen. The program helps students who are interested in pursuing a career in medicine to build an educational portfolio. In addition, our new UH Future Nurse Academy is a two-week program for high school students that includes shadowing rotations and visits to local nursing schools. Unlike many other summer programs, the UH Future Nurse Academy provides its students a stipend, making it more economically feasible for students who need to earn money for college or work to help support their family. We also host minority youth who are interested in careers in health care at our Future Shades of Medicine Youth Summit, with attendance at last year’s event reaching 400. All these initiatives will position us to provide care to our community well into the future.?

4. Let go of the way things have “always been” – especially when it comes to physical space. We’re on a multi-year “optimization” journey at UH, taking a hard look at every high-dollar fixed asset we have and how we can use them more effectively – every MRI, hospital bed, OR and clinic. Many of our Urgent Care facilities, for example, have been relocated closer to where people live, work and shop to provide greater service to our patients. We’re also pursuing a strategy of targeted growth, locating our services where demand is highest and patients need us the most. In a nutshell, we’re thinking differently, optimizing care and convenience for our patients. Enabling all of it is our new electronic medical record, increasing efficiency for our caregivers and allowing patients to take an active role in their own care. Change can be hard, it’s true, but it can be beneficial in the long run.?

5. Collaborate, collaborate, collaborate – even with those who appear to be your competitors. We at UH collaborate with our Northeast Ohio neighbors Cleveland Clinic and The MetroHealth System (Cleveland, OH) on tackling many social issues, such as mitigating the opioid epidemic, workforce development, infant/maternal mortality, research and education, economic opportunity, and the pressing problem of food insecurity. For example, this past year we joined forces to renew our efforts to fight hunger in our community, both collectively and as individual institutions. Whether it’s food insecurity or improving diversity in the healthcare workforce or supply chain, these are difficult problems. None of us has all the answers. It only makes sense to put competition aside and make the most progress for our community. We like to call this “coopertition.”?

As with all New Year’s resolutions, these measures will require tight focus and daily commitment to make the small, incremental changes that will ultimately add up to big-picture success. But it’s certainly work worth doing.

Our patients and people everywhere are counting on us for better outcomes and a better customer experience.

I humbly suggest these five points above are a good place to start.?

Happy New Year to all.