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Just days ago, we completed what I consider to be among the most productive and compelling meetings Catholic Health East has ever hosted. Mission Possible: Building the Bridge to Person-Centered Health Care was our health system’s first attempt to bring together all of our key leadership constituencies - Sponsors, board members, senior management, and clinicians – into a single forum to discuss, review and initiate strategic matters of great importance. And nothing is more important to the future of Catholic Health East than helping us to evolve into a person-centered health care system. By assembling all of these leadership groups in one place, at one time…our goal was to create organizational alignment between managers, board members, clinicians and Sponsors on the necessity for the change to person-centered care throughout Catholic Health East. At our general and breakout sessions throughout our three-day meeting, we were able to share “early successes” with person-centered health care from within and outside of CHE. Our time together was punctuated by presentations from several nationally renowned speakers. Sr. Carol Keehan, president and chief executive officer of the Catholic Health Association of the United States, shared her “insider” view of the current health care reform process. Bill Strickland, president and CEO of Manchester Bidwell Corporation and a MacArthur “genius” awardee for leadership and ingenuity in the arts, shared the successes he has experienced in partnering with local industries to improve educational and job training opportunities in urban areas. Elliott Fisher. M.D., director of the Center for Health Policy Research at Dartmouth Medical School and one of the authors of the Dartmouth Atlas, shared his thoughts on our industry-wide quest to achieve accountability for health quality and costs. And John DeGioia, Ph.D., president of Georgetown University and the world’s first lay president of a Jesuit university, spoke passionately about his own spirituality and challenged us to identify the animating vision of our organization that is re-imaged, re-interpreted and sustained anew in our day. Each conference attendee attended one of nine concurrent breakout sessions, presented principally by subject matter experts from within Catholic Health East. Topics included the use of innovative technology in health care; patient-centered comprehensive care management; aligning provider, physician and payer incentives; reimbursement reform; payer participation in comprehensive care delivery; the transformation of nursing homes; alternatives to acute institutional settings; innovations in the care of special needs populations; and the changing role of independent practitioners. Later in the conference, all attendees gathered by their respective RHC/JOA to share their conference experiences with their local colleagues, and to initiate a plan of action for how their RHC/JOA would begin to build its bridge to person-centered health care. Throughout the conference, attendees were continuously reminded about the realities of person-centered health care via a series of patient/resident “vignettes” that had been created prior to the conference. Six individuals – representing Mercy Medical (Daphne, Ala,), St. Mary’s Health Care System (Athens, Ga.), Pittsburgh Mercy Health System, Mercy Hospital (Portland, Maine), Lourdes Health System (Camden, N.J.), and St. Mary Medical Center (Langhorne, Pa.) – allowed us to share their personal journeys through and interactions with our health care ministry. Each had an engaging and compelling story to tell. Snippets of their stories and experiences were played throughout the conference; their willingness to be open and honest and share their emotions and feelings with our nearly 400 conference attendees brought an added sense of reality…purpose…and connection to the gathering. We know that in spite of all of the discussions and analysis and talk about person-centered health care, this is an evolutionary process; there is no switch to “flip.” Sr. Kathleen Popko, CHE’s executive vice president of strategy and ministry development, led a session that detailed the steps involved in “building the bridge” to person-centered health care, as well as the leadership implications that this change will require at all levels of our health system. Sr. Kathleen addressed the audience as CHE’s “bridge construction crew”, and described the work that we will all be involved in as we build the planks (IT –enabled information, patient-centered comprehensive care, aligned incentives, reimbursement reform, payer participation, collaboration across the continuum of care, and remote care) for the bridge to person-centered care. My hope is that this conference represented a watershed event which will be the genesis of CHE’s transformation to a truly person-centered health care delivery model as we continue to strive to be a transforming, healing presence in the communities we serve. Sincerely yours,
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