Letters

We have entered 2022 with a hope-filled future given the resilience with which the LMH Health team served through an unprecedented second year of the COVID-19 pandemic . The Trustees hope that our community recognizes the effective and collaborative leadership provided throughout a year that presented significant challenges .

Despite difficulties related to the ongoing pandemic, the LMH Health team met the 2021 objectives set to assure our promise as a partner for lifelong health, expanding access to healthcare through inclusion, diversity and equity integration, negotiating payer contracts to ensure affordable, high-quality care, planning for a strategic clinical partnership that is already bringing more clinical specialties to our community and strengthening relationships with our community of physicians and advanced practice providers — all while meeting the hospital’s budget targets to ensure financial sustainability . We must acknowledge the pressures faced by the workforce in 2021 in a period of industry-wide staff shortages, workplace stress caused by an unrelenting COVID-19 patient demand, and the impact of contract and traveler staffing . Leadership has evaluated and adjusted policies to support flexibility and adaptability of the workplace . Our current and future financial health will support values-based workplace innovation and fairness .

There is a popular business saying — “Hope is not a strategy” — but that presumes that hopefulness is passive . I would argue that hope fuels passion and that passion is at the heart of the LMH Health promise to our community, our staff, our physicians and advanced practice providers . Our hope is active, engaged and committed to being your partner for lifelong health .

Beth Llewellyn Board Chair, LMH Health

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As leaders, it is important to cast our vision on the distant horizon so that we can anticipate the twists and turns in the road ahead, as well as the straightaways and any obstacles that might be in our path . While we cannot know for sure what the future holds, there are lessons to take away from the miles we have recently covered . In 2021, we traveled an often difficult, challenging and even heartbreaking path . Like all times in our journey, it is in these most difficult moments where the greatest learning occurs and where we test ourselves as individuals, leaders, organizations and communities . It is also in these times where the power of hope lends guidance and light to the road ahead .

The road traveled last year taught us much .

First, we learned that working closely with our colleagues across the community — in a unified effort with open dialogue and common purpose — matters so much . Despite inevitable differences when working through a difficult challenge, we remained collegial, open and committed to what was best for our community — testing, vaccination, information sharing, implementing health orders and ensuring we did all we could do for the health of the community . I am proud of the role LMH Health played over the last year in this vital effort .

Second, we were reminded that what we do is, foremost, a human endeavor . The courage and dedication of people caring for one another and for complete strangers, despite personal risk and uncertainty, is being human at its best . LMH Health is more than 1,800 human beings caring for others . Physicians, advanced practice professionals, nurses, skilled technologists, nursing aides and assistants, receptionists, housekeepers, food service workers, biomedical engineers, technology experts, business office professionals and hundreds of others give their all . They embody the strength and the hope of LMH Health . These people — our staff — are the ones who, every day, turn vision and strategy into reality for patients . When we make great programmatic strides and significant investments in robotic orthopedic surgery, a high-quality cardiac catheterization lab and imaging services that rival the best regional centers, our employees are the ones who bring the technologies to life . When we advance care initiatives around high-risk breast cancer screenings, achieve certification for our total hip and knee replacement program, and earn the prestigious Baby-Friendly designation and more “Patient First” services for our patients and community, our staff are the ones who combine the expertise and compassion to make a difference .

And as our amazing foundation raises more than $4 million in funding to support our state-of-the-art cancer center expansion, we know our staff will be the ones to make it a place where patients feel hope for the future .

2022 will ensure that our vision of the road ahead is one that has tremendous hopes and dreams for excellent healthcare provided to all . And, as we do, we know it is our people who make this path real every day .

Russ Johnson President & CEO, LMH Health

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