Health center develops community-focused goals

The Jefferson County Health Center Board of Trustees heard an update for the hospital?s strategic plan during a retreat earlier this month.

Administrator and CEO Deb Cardin had told the board in November that although the strategic plan created 18 months ago ran through the end of 2012, she wanted it to be updated sooner because of changes in the health care field, the national debt and the aging population of both the community and the hospital staff.

Cardin told the board in November the strategic plan didn?t need to be completely re-written, but that layers could be added to it.

The updated strategic plan, which will run through 2013, included a new pillar focusing on the community.

The new community pillar lists the goals as: ?Improve the health and wellness of the communities we serve? and ?To improve value to the community.?

To meet those goals, the plan lists several tactics: develop a community team; develop a community advocacy group to promote awareness of services and provide feedback on the delivery of services; focus on all customers and markets; enhance communications about the health center to all communities it serves; foster community outreach and organizational volunteerism; partner to provide community health and wellness programs and initiatives; and seek population health improvement.

The tactics also include: continuing to develop community programs, public forums, screenings and more to educate and promote services provided by the health center; develop programs, like diabetes, elder services, women?s health and wellness that focus on key audiences in the community; and soliciting a list of occupational medicine needs and wants from local businesses and industries and setting up a task force to study the issue of providing occupational medicine.

According to the strategic plan, the successfulness of meeting the community goals would be measured by feedback from an advocacy group, the number of community projects, the number of volunteer hours and a health assessment of the community or targeted populations.

Under the finance/growth pillar of the updated strategic plan, several tactics, such as improving efficiency through productivity and financial management; increasing catering opportunities; beginning time-of-service collections; exploring the clinic business structure options to enhance reimbursements; and more were added.

Under the people pillar, additions to tactics included further development of organizational leadership and educating and engaging employees and physicians to create leaders; develop succession plans for leaders; and more.

Additional tactics also were added to the service pillar and the quality/safety pillar.