Multi-topic

Good morning!

Today, I want to update you all on several active, important topics. 

First, though, I want to remind you that we have the honor of hosting Dr. Darrell Kirch, president emeritus of the Association of American Medical Colleges, as the next speaker in the Vice Chancellor Lecture Series. At noon, on Monday, Aug. 21, in SOM 124, he will speak on the topics of well-being and burnout. I encourage you to attend. More information can be found here.

Now, on to today’s topics.

The UMMC Colony Park project is progressing on schedule. If you aren’t already familiar with this, UMMC Colony Park is the name for the site currently being cleared in Ridgeland north of the “Washington Monument” and directly west of I-55.

When complete, the building will feature two wings with a central entrance. A one-story ambulatory surgery center will be on the right when entering, and a three-story medical office building will be on the left. Both facilities are much-needed additions to our education and training capabilities. The full UMMC Colony Park site is large enough for additional buildings in the future.

The ASC will have six operating rooms and two procedure rooms and will have needed imaging capabilities including MRI, CT, X-ray and ultrasound. Areas for support services such as labs, OT and PT, pharmacy and sterile processing will be state-of-the-art. The specialties that will have a presence in the office building include neurology, ENT, ophthalmology, dermatology, cardiology, plastic surgery and orthopaedics.

We are nearing the end of the hiring process for a UMMC Colony Park executive administrator, who will oversee the day-to-day operations of the facilities. The position should be filled this month. Construction documents from the architects will soon go out for bid, and we plan to have a ribbon-cutting ceremony for the site in January 2026.

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I want to update you on searches for some key leadership positions.

As you may have seen in a Campus Memo announcement last week, Dr. Mark Ladner is the new chair of the Department of Psychiatry and Human Behavior. I’m confident Dr. Ladner will do great things within this department.

We are in the beginning stages of recruiting a new chair of the Department of Radiation Oncology in the School of Medicine. We’ve engaged with Dr. Hak Choy, former chair of radiation oncology at UT Southwestern Medical Center, to assist with the department’s operations while we conduct this national search.

Recruitment for a new dean of the School of Nursing is underway, led by Dr. Patrick Smith, chief faculty affairs officer, and Dr. Natalie Gaughf, assistant vice chancellor for academic affairs. They are soliciting help and input from leaders from across the institution and SON faculty. The position has been posted for internal and external applicants.

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A search for a chief of care coordination is active, and we recently brought on the services of national search firm Korn Ferry to help us identify and engage with the type and level of candidates we believe we need for this very important role.

A consistent challenge, maybe the most important one we currently face, is difficulty in implementing and sustaining improvements in patient flow. Patients waiting in the emergency department and post-surgery unit for inpatient beds to open create a logjam that impacts nearly all of our hospital operations. We must find additional ways to transition patients who no longer need acute care to other facilities and discharge patients who are ready to go home. For these and other reasons, this is an important hire, and it will be complete before end of year.

Speaking of patient flow issues, we’ve pushed forward several initiatives to help with this challenge.

• A new discharge lounge
• Coordinated care rounding of interdisciplinary teams tasked with pre-planning upcoming discharges
• A patient flow committee and a patient capacity committee
• An additional safety huddle to discuss topics related to capacity, admission and discharge
• A Friday meeting to coordinate weekend discharge needs
• Increased coordinated care staffing
• A half-day retreat next month to develop an overall throughput plan

While we are looking for a new chief of care coordination, we are actively making improvements and committing to them.

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As has been said many times, but is always worth repeating, patient safety is our top priority. How patients perceive the quality and safety of our care is important and influences our publicly reported reputation scores.

I’m happy to report that we moved up in the 2023 Star Ratings by the Center for Medicaid and Medicare Services. We didn’t quite reach the 3-star level, but we are getting close and have been on an upward trend since 2019. The same can be said for our Leapfrog score issued earlier this year, which remained a C but is oh-so-close to a B. When we get to a B – and we will – it will put us in rare company for academic medical centers.

Much of the progress we have made is due to the focus on our internal quality scorecard, which can be found on the Intranet here. Looking year-to-year at the data, you can see that significant improvements have been made in pressure injuries and bloodstream infections.

Hand hygiene is always a top strategic focus because it’s an indicator of how well you can expect to do on hospital-acquired infections. It requires personal accountability and for us all to help each other to reach our goals. Dr. Lisa Didion, chief medical officer and our clinical quality leader, likes to put it this way: “See something, say something.”

Overall, we’ve been hovering in the 80% compliance area for a while, but the Children’s and Wiser areas are leading the way, having been over the 90% compliance target for several months in the past year.

Let’s all stay laser-focused on protecting our patients, which can have a significant positive impact in other areas.

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Lastly, I want to remind you to please follow the guidelines mentioned in the memo from earlier this week about our updated UMMC Brand Standards and email signature template. It’s important that we always showcase ourselves professionally. It matters. We are the state’s only academic medical center, leading biomedical and population health researcher and largest producer of health science professionals. We want everything our customers and key stakeholders see to reflect a quality, high-level institution that is leading the efforts for A Healthier Mississippi.