The Plan for the Next Five Years

March 5, 2021

TO:All UMMC Faculty, Staff and Students

FROM:Dr. LouAnn Woodward, Vice Chancellor for Health Affairs and Dean, School of Medicine

SUBJECT: UMMC 2025 – The Plan for the Next Five Years

Institutions as large as ours – an operating budget of $1.7 billion, about 13,000 employees and students, hundreds of thousands of square feet of facilities statewide, an enormous, nationally ranked research enterprise and other indicators of our immense size – require thoughtful, intricate and well-crafted plans to guide our day-to-day operations and provide a pathway to follow to ensure our institution’s success, future stability and prosperity. Like most organizations large and small, we develop institutional strategic plans to help identify those areas we should be focusing our energies on and guide us as we navigate through the many initiatives typically identified by a new five-year strategic plan.

For more than a year, many of our institution’s leaders have collaborated to develop a new five-year strategic plan for our Medical Center. In its final stages, UMMC 2025, like those plans that have come before it, will serve as a beacon for us to follow to help us reach our institutional goals. 

UMMC 2025 identifies five strategies as key areas of focus. During the years this plan covers, several goals identified within each strategy will serve as a more detailed roadmap to drive our decisions and actions. The five main strategies are not expected to change, but the annual goals tied to each strategy may evolve from year to year.

The strategies established under the UMMC 2025 plan are:

• Maximize value in quality of care
• Drive strategic clinical growth
• Expand health care services statewide
• Position academic programs for the next generation of learners
• Strengthen research programs

These are all broad topics, but the way we will achieve them will become significantly clearer through the annually updated goal approach we will use for this new strategic plan.

The complete strategic plan document will be shared when it becomes finalized, but today, I’d like to share with you the summary document for the first year of the plan. The 2021 summary for UMMC 2025 can be found online here. In next Friday’s VC Notes, I will share more detailed information about the plan and my thoughts.

It’s vitally important that we all become aware of the goals UMMC leadership has set for our institution and the way we intend to reach those goals. I believe strongly that creating A Healthier Mississippi starts with a well-functioning and forward-moving University of Mississippi Medical Center. And each and every one of you plays a part in making that a reality.

Thank you.