Spring Faculty Meeting and State of the Institution

Good morning!

All things spring are upon us – everything from the time change to cars coated with pollen to warmer afternoons.

Last week’s Spring Faculty Meeting was a chance to spring forward in another way, as I shared our accomplishments and financial health up to this point in the fiscal calendar, plus recognized some of those who contribute to the excellence of this institution.

Today, I want to share a few of the points I covered in my presentation. I won’t cover everything I talked about. This is just a sampling of my discussion topics.

UMMC 2025 five-year strategic plan
The strategic plan represents our core priorities of maximizing value in quality of care, driving strategic clinical growth, expanding health care services statewide, positioning academic programs for the next generation of learners and strengthening research programs. The goals we set and work toward each year are intended to support these five strategies and keep UMMC moving in a positive direction.

With the current strategic plan set to wrap up at the end of the next fiscal year, we’ve already begun planning for the next one, which will start July 1, 2025. We anticipate using a similar model with five overarching strategies and annual goals to be updated each year.

Patient safety: Our top priority
Our long-time top strategic priority has been patient safety and improving our clinical quality scores. We must keep this top of mind, even the most basic of safety measures.

An example is hand hygiene. Some might say, ‘Oh, my goodness, we’re still talking about hand hygiene 10 years later?’ Yes, we are! We have yet to hit our target of 90% compliance with hand hygiene. It is critically important and has a cascading impact on hospital-acquired infections. Clean hands at all times are and always will be important.

As I’ve said on numerous occasions, clinical quality is the foundation of everything we want to do. If we get this right, positive outcomes in all Medical Center endeavors will follow.

One goal we achieved this year is to establish the Office of Operational Excellence. I’m happy to say Varang Parikh will be joining us soon to lead the office. It will allow us to take some of the models and methods we’ve learned in our quality journey and expand them in other areas of performance improvement. Some of those areas are documentation, throughput and our overall supply costs.

Financials
It’s budget season. Everyone’s got money on their mind.

We were trending below budget for a while this fiscal year but have turned things around. We are now ahead in net income by about $6.5M, which is $35M higher than at this same point last year. In February alone, we made more money ($8.6 million) than we budgeted ($4 million). This is all very positive. Our expenses are higher than expected in some areas, but in many cases, they are tied to costs related to higher patient volumes, which require more resources, supplies and labor. We expect March to be another good month as well.

We should end this year in a positive place, and if we can keep this momentum, it will allow us to make investments to continue to grow and do things that are in the best interest of our patients, students, research programs and all Mississippians. It’s what we’ve been working toward for the past eight years.

Another positive finance-related activity I mentioned is the work the Office of Development team is doing to identify and connect with people who are drawn to support the Medical Center and its programs. This involves building and stewarding relationships that yield philanthropic gifts. It’s remarkable to think that our annual fundraising goal of $25 million was considered a lofty, ambitious goal only just seven to 10 years ago, and now our generous donors are investing in our priorities at more than this level year after year.

Payor mix
For the past three years, the payor mix breakdown of how we are reimbursed for our services has remained constant, with 40% currently coming from Medicaid. When you look at it in the context of what we’ve been able to do on the financial side, it’s really impressive. As I speak to leaders of other academic medical centers and talk about our payor mix and the financial results we’re able to see, I get a lot of ‘I don’t know how y’all do that.’ It really highlights a lot of good work going on despite the challenging payor mix we have.

Government funding
Kristy Simms and Anna Sparks lead engagement with our state and federal elected officials – including working all angles to help advocate for pathways that allow appropriations to be directed our way. They do a great job looking at pots of money available and the areas in which the Mississippi Legislature and U.S. Congress may be looking to invest. They figure out which of our projects and programs meet criteria that could yield monetary support.

The Mississippi Legislature hasn’t yet finalized the state budget this session, but we did learn that in a recently passed federal omnibus bill that more than $17 million will be coming to the Medical Center in support for a variety of projects. Our supporters in Washington saw fit to aid us with, among other things, the buildout of the PICU in the Batson Tower for the UMMC Mississippi Burn Center, renovation of existing space for a psychiatric emergency services unit, building out space in the Translational Research Center for cancer research and updating our fire suppression grid.

DIS update
I shared a few recently implemented Division of Information Systems-led initiatives, but today I want to focus on the shout out I gave that team.

DIS has made significant improvements lately in customer service. They are responsive and innovative with customers and work from a position of ‘We can help you solve this problem.’ Kudos to Kevin Yearick, chief information officer, for doing what is needed to establish an internal services unit that deserves a gold star for excellent customer service. They set the bar high for the level of internal customer service we expect from all our operational units.

All for Your Health brand campaign
I’m sure you’ve seen our All for Your Health ads or billboards, likely several times since we kicked off the statewide campaign in fall 2022. We are investing in TV and streaming video, radio, social media, print and digital publications and websites in the hopes of building more awareness of the Medical Center and what we do. Since October 2023, we know that an ad from our campaign was broadcast or posted 28.7 million times in one of the mediums listed above. We are providing lots of opportunities for people to hear a positive message about UMMC!

We plan to keep this campaign going next year, and new ads are in development for a planned fall roll out.

We pair this marketing activity with comprehensive public and media relations efforts – to the tune of more than 100 engagements with reporters/members of the media this fiscal year alone – to make sure we are getting the word out about your good work in all areas we can, in this state and well beyond.

We have a great story to tell, and we need to do what we can to give people an opportunity to hear it.

Facilities/construction updates
We have lots of facilities changes, moves and upgrades coming online this fiscal year and next. Here are a few:

• Buildout of University Hospital patient floors (adding 32 med/surg and 18 ICU beds) – to be completed November 2024
• Renovation of Children’s Center for Cancer and Blood Disorders – to be completed June 2024
• School of Nursing – estimated move-in April 2026
• School of Dentistry – estimated move-in November 2026
• UMMC Colony Park North and South
  • These Ridgeland-based projects are moving full steam ahead. Colony Park North is the development of land adjacent to the “Washington Monument” next to the interstate. The building that will open there around March 2026 will include an ambulatory surgery center and medical offices.
  • Colony Park South is the office building under construction on the south side of Colony Park Boulevard near the interstate, where we will lease space for clinics. We should be seeing patients in that building at the start of 2025.

• The Medical Student Research Program has been renewed by the Hearin Foundation for five more years to the tune of $979,000.
• Drs. Lir-Wan Fan and Abhay Bhatt have been granted a patent to improve outcomes of newborns diagnosed with Hypoxic-Ischemic Encephalopathy.
• The School of Graduate Studies in the Health Sciences submitted three T32 institutional training grant proposals in 2023. Two were new, which is very impressive. And 60% of their second-year graduate students and above have submitted fellowship applications for funding. We’ve heard back from half of those with positive results, so we’re very pleased about that.
• The biostatistics and data science programs in the School of Population Health have had 100% graduate job placement since the first class in 2019.
• We were awarded the 2023 Chest Pain-MI Registry Platinum Performance Achievement Award from the American College of Cardiology.
• We were also awarded The Joint Commission Gold Seal of Approval for ventricular assist device destination therapy.