VC Notes - A weekly word from Dr. LouAnn Woodward
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Friday, August 9, 2024

UMMC 2025 Final Year

Good morning.

About five weeks ago, on July 1, we entered fiscal/academic year 2025 and the final year of the Medical Center’s five-year strategic plan, UMMC 2025.

When we kicked off our strategic plan in 2020, I said in the months prior that it “… will guide our strategic priorities and investments. This plan will position us to serve more patients, more efficiently, with excellent outcomes. It will position us to educate more physicians, nurses and health care providers to care for Mississippians. And it will position us to conduct more research to find cures and save lives.” Of course, I had no idea that we would soon be embroiled in a catastrophic, deadly, multi-year pandemic.

As I look back on the years this plan covered, I believe that my predictions have been realized – and more. With UMMC 2025 as the roadmap, we have experienced significant and meaningful growth and have changed existing systems to be more efficient and effective. Many of our successes over the past four years can be traced back to strategic plan-driven initiatives. And I expect more to come in the final year of UMMC 2025

The five overall strategies will remain the same as when we launched.

• 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 strategies, owned by our associate vice chancellors, represent the framework that determines where we should allocate resources or focus on growth to support our mission areas effectively.

Each year, goals and action items have been developed under these strategies that narrowed the scope of work for that respective fiscal year. In essence, each year was its own strategic plan, helping move the Medical Center forward step by step, year by year. This structure has been effective, allowing us to reach goals and make consequential progress.

This year, the final year of UMMC 2025, we have 21 new goals that will be our strategic focus points.
A goals chart for the final year 2024-2025 by UMMC, listing various objectives related to healthcare improvement, efficiency, technology, and partnerships in a structured layout.
UMMC 2025 has served as a guiding light for our mission areas and the overall organization. The success and positive movement we’ve experienced through this plan is a result of the forethought and planning of many of our leadership teams but is mostly due to one thing – YOUR work. Everything accomplished under UMMC 2025 will have been possible only because you made it possible. Thank you!

I’m energized daily by your dedication to helping the Medical Center move forward. Through a well-constructed and implemented strategic plan and the work of our faculty, staff and students, we have made considerable progress on our overall goal of A Healthier Mississippi.

P.S. Work is already underway for the next five-year strategic plan that will start on July 1, 2025, and I couldn’t be more excited to continue and build upon what we’ve accomplished.
Signed, Lou Ann Woodward, M.D.

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