In his third town hall meeting as executive vice president for health affairs and medical school dean, Dr. Frank Torti reiterated a patient-centered vision for the future of the UConn Health Center, and asked the Health Center community to join him in shaping that future.
“The patient is the source of our revenue, the focus of our research, and the foundation of our teaching,” Torti said, in a reprise of his remarks from a year ago. “As long as patients are the touchstone for guiding our decisions, I believe we’ll be moving in the right direction. Nothing has changed my opinion about this.”
Torti acknowledged the input received from faculty and staff over the last year, through small group meetings and a broader participation in what’s become known as the “strategic refresh.” More than 1,000 faculty and staff have taken part in UConn Health 2020, an online tool to identify and prioritize objectives.
“This is our Health Center, not my Health Center. It is ours to shape, it is ours to fix, and it is ours to celebrate,” Torti said before detailing six goals:
- Become a world-renowned destination for discovery and innovation
- Prepare graduates for lifelong success
- Enhance health care for the citizens of Connecticut and beyond
- Enhance population health and population health equity
- Create an environment judged by faculty and staff as “The Best Place to Work”
- Ensure financial integrity and strength
Torti also revealed the highest priorities identified by the more than 800 respondents to the UConn 2020 survey prioritizing goals and objectives:
- Improve access
- Improve quality outcomes
- Reform revenue allocation—assign fiscal responsibility
- Rated as a “Great Place to Be” by faculty and staff
- Build presence in genomics, biomedical engineering and drug development
“The message here is pretty unmistakable,” Torti said. “Our faculty and staff have the patient top of mind. They want better access for our patients and referring physicians to our Health Center and better quality. In short, they want to make the Health Center a place of truly excellent care.”
Torti announced plans to redouble efforts to improve access and patient satisfaction.
“We will have our phones answered, and answered quickly,” Torti said. “We are hiring and training additional people, as well as simplifying and standardizing our phone procedures. We will return calls within 24 hours. We will see new patients within a week. We will establish a physician access line that will connect referring physicians directly to our doctors.”
He also said quality and safety “need intense and focused efforts,” while recognizing some early progress: modest gains in patient satisfaction scores and patient revenues, and substantial improvements in emergency department metrics such as “door to doctor” time, which has decreased from 44 to 16 minutes.
Regarding the Health Center’s financial challenges, Torti said, “We face enormous budgetary stresses in 2014.
“The only hope we have of sustaining our academic missions of research and education is if we can show ourselves financially sound. It is the dollars from the clinical enterprise that every other state medical center uses to reinvest in the academic missions. We must do the same. In the coming months, we must examine every program, every procedure, every purchase, and ask whether it is necessary to achieve our goals. We will also take a hard look at how we organize ourselves. There will be no sacred cows. We must get this straight. We must change, we must survive, and we must thrive.”
The town hall meeting is available for viewing at http://bit.ly/13townhall.
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