2011 Community Leadership Briefing

Thomas J. Strauss,
President and Chief Executive Officer
Summa Health System
2011 Community Leadership Briefing
Friday, November 18, 2011
Akron, Ohio  

“Kindness of a stranger…”

On December 17, 1933, a most unusual advertisement was placed in the Canton Repository newspaper.

An anonymous donor, under the name of B. Virdot offered financial help to anybody who wrote him a letter describing their troubles, and explaining how they would use the money.

The letters poured in.

One read, “I am writing this because I need clothing. And sometimes we run out of food.”

Another letter-writer asked for $5 to buy her daughter a doll.

For a long time, the mystery of this anonymous generosity went unsolved.

Then, a man from Canton named Ted Gup found a suitcase in his attic containing letters addressed to B. Virdot.  After investigating, he realized that B. Virdot was his grandfather, Samuel Stone.

Last year, a group of Mr. Stone’s beneficiaries and relatives gathered to reflect on hard times, and marvel at the kindness of a stranger.

They agreed that Mr. Stone’s generosity is an example of how much a gift given – without expectation of repayment – can mean. 

It’s an example of what we can do for those who struggle. 

Summa is by no means anonymous. But for 120 years, our mission has been to improve the health of the region we serve.

And in times of need, we have always felt a special imperative to do everything we can for the people we call not just our patients, but our neighbors.

Because, ultimately, Summa is of this community and for this community.

And this call to serve has never been stronger… or more important.

As you know, times are incredibly tough for a lot of people in northeast Ohio.

The number of Ohioans who fell into poverty last year alone is equivalent to the entire population of Akron.

More than ever, we at Summa feel a responsibility to serve.  Not just by providing high quality, high-value health care for our patients. Not just through providing charity care for those in need. But by advancing the health of this community —and by giving back as much as the community has given us.

Community benefit

That giving can be measured in numbers. And I’ll mention those quickly – because they are significant. Last year, Summa provided $69.5 million in uncompensated care, and $29.5 million in subsidized health services.

What do those numbers mean?  More than 83,000 visits with patients.  

Those visits include mammograms, x-rays for injuries, medications dispensed.  Diseases treated. Lives improved. Lives saved.

Those numbers, as impressive as they are, don’t tell us the whole story. They don’t add up to the real benefit of Summa’s work with the community.  Because in my view, the benefit goes both ways.  Yes, it’s about the people we serve, but it’s also about the people who serve, because it connects us with why we serve.

And that can’t be measured in numbers. It’s felt in our connection to the people and neighborhoods in the 5 counties in which we operate. It’s seen in the connections forged outside physician practices or the hospital.  And let me say from personal experience – it is powerful.

Today I want to talk about that service… and the work we’re doing at Summa to ensure that our system is strong enough through this time of transition to continue serving.

Serving the community -- Examples

Last year, Summa held a number of service events and projects throughout the community.

For example, one initiative we’re passionate about is the Career Immersion program with the Akron Public School system, supported in part by a grant from the JP Morgan Chase Foundation.

A lot of kids dream of being doctors or nurses or medical technicians or pharmacists. But few have had the real exposure to what those careers involve.

So, Michele Johnson, an Instructor at North High School, identifies students who have shown an interest in healthcare fields, and she works with Summa to team those students with health professionals who become their mentors. The students come to Summa five times throughout the semester and spend the day shadowing their mentor and learning more about what they do. At the end of the year, the participating students present what they’ve learned at a capstone event held here at Summa.

One student, a refugee from a war-torn country, dreamt of a career as a trauma surgeon — a field he chose after witnessing his cousin lose a hand in a blast from an IED.

The stories we hear from students like this have a huge impact on mentors. They give the Summa staff a new appreciation for Akron’s diversity. And just as students are exposed to new fields, mentors working with these students are exposed to new cultures and customs.

This has also been the experience at Summa Health System’s Family Medicine Center. Each year, we see about 1,250 refugees from war-torn countries. Dr. Sharon Van Nostran chairs our effort to serve limited English proficiency patients – and the outreach she does is amazing.  She helps find – and Summa pays for – translators.  We’ve hired a physician who speaks Nepali, one of the more common languages for Akron’s refugee population. At the center, they see patients who struggle with post-traumatic stress disorder from their past experiences.  They have to be aware of different cultural customs. Again, this is a way in which we are able to learn about our community as we improve the health of the community.

These are just a few of our many community initiatives. And I want to just highlight one more. It speaks, I think, to the power we have—as a whole community—to make an enormous difference in people’s lives.

It’s called Project Homeless Connect.   Every first Tuesday in May, Summa joins with other community organizations — everything from food banks to legal services — to provide a one-day, one-stop shop for those members of our community who are homeless. Each individual is assigned a volunteer “navigator”, who helps them identify the nine services they need most — anything from dental care to a haircut to help resolving a legal issue.

Our physicians, dentists, and other care providers spend the day screening, diagnosing, treating and counseling hundreds of individuals. And they try to follow up with everybody who needs additional care.

Project Homeless Connect truly represents what is extraordinary about the Akron community—and what’s possible when we all work together.

House of the Lord Update

In many ways, the work we’re doing together doesn’t just demonstrate the strength of this community; it provides a model for the nation.

Last year, I spoke to you about an extraordinary collaboration between Summa Health System, Testa Builders, and The House of the Lord.

A once-deserted shopping plaza in West Akron  has become the Village at New Seasons — a mixed use complex with retail space, affordable housing for senior citizens, and the Summa Center for Minority Health and Health Disparities Solutions. 

I’m pleased to report tremendous progress on this project. The apartments are almost filled, and the clinic is completed and scheduled to provide services. But this is just the beginning.

As many of you know, Harvard surgeon and author Dr. Atul Gawande is in town this week. He wrote an influential article about how we can dramatically reduce our nation’s health care expenditures if we concentrate on the small number of patients who generate the majority of medical costs. These patients, who tend to be poorer and sicker, live in what Dr. Gawande calls medical “hot spots.”

The neighborhood in West Akron that houses the Village at New Seasons looks a lot like a hot spot. Its residents are poor, and suffer from high rates of chronic disease like diabetes. Many are uninsured and don’t get the consistent care they need to stay healthy.

That’s why we’re so excited about the potential of the Village and of the Center for Minority Health and Health Disparities. With this model of community-based primary care, we’ll see healthcare costs go down, as more people seek preventive care. And we’ll see the health of the community improve.

This project has the potential to be a national model — but our work won’t end when the doors open. To be successful and sustainable, we need ongoing individual and community support. 

Leading through change

I’m excited about all of the work we’re doing. But most of my time is spent ensuring that we’re in a position to continue doing that work long into the future.  It’s no secret that we are in a time of significant transformation in healthcare, a transformation that will require all of us to make significant changes.

But, much like our work with the Village at New Seasons, we want to lead the change.

That’s why we are putting in place a new strategic plan which centers on evolving the clinical enterprise in order to improve our quality and safety, while reducing costs for the long run.

Now, I know that people tend to equate reducing costs with cutting services. But that is not what we intend to do.

Our goal is to truly transform care delivery by providing coordinated, high-quality, medically necessary care and support services to patients across the healthcare continuum.

We are on a path to transition from volume-driven healthcare to value-driven healthcare. 

We’re building partnerships so that we can leverage our resources and benefit from scale. We’re working with payers and providers to better coordinate care.

And Summa is increasing our efficiency and effectiveness by aggressively addressing avoidable issues like 30-day readmission rates and hospital-acquired infections and other complications. We are refining our care processes to better meet the holistic needs of patients. 

For example, Summa recently introduced a nationally recognized program, A Time to Heal, to help local breast cancer survivors with their recovery process. Over a 12-week period survivors meet in weekly groups. They engage in light exercise, journaling and mental exercises, and they talk about everything from nutrition to relationships.  The goal is to achieve physical, emotional and spiritual wellness. As one participant said, “You’re so used to being surrounded by your doctors and your chemo nurses and these professionals that really support you and get you through. And now, all of a sudden, you’re on your own. So this is perfect timing to deal with what’s next for me and how to recover and go on.”

Summa has also launched an Accountable Care pilot program to better coordinate care and services to defined patient groups including Medicare and employee populations.

Dr. Michael Hillman will address our pilot program during the panel discussion.

As we all know, health reform has dramatically shifted the national landscape, away from fee-for-service and towards population health and value-based healthcare. 

Emily Friedman, an independent health policy analyst, will have more to say about the dynamic world of healthcare reform, the current deficit and spending debate and what it will mean for all of us. 

And Greg Moody, the director of the governor’s office of health transformation, will talk specifically about what it will mean for Ohio.

At Summa, we know that the transformation isn’t complete, and that we need to be able to succeed in both the fee-for-service world, and the value-based healthcare world. 

And we’re already being recognized for striking that balance. In late September, when we announced our ten-year vision for transformation, the Akron Beacon Journal wrote and I quote:  “Hospitals and other providers across the nation must embrace the hard work of maintaining quality while improving efficiency. Summa has jumped to the front, reflecting the importance of the country finally bending the curve on healthcare costs.”

I believe that this is how Summa truly serves the community — by providing the best value in healthcare to our neighbors. By making smart, strategic decisions so that we can continue to care for this community for years to come.

A healthy community

So I want to close my remarks today by going back to where I began — 78 years ago when an anonymous man opened his heart to strangers.

I’m inspired by what one Ohio man did for those in need.

But, today, I’m even more inspired by what we can all do for each other… and the role Summa plays in that effort. I’m inspired by the countless organizations that dedicate their time and resources to our neighbors and friends who are struggling.

And I’m inspired by the countless Summa employees who, every day, care for the health of this community. Who go above and beyond the boundaries of their jobs. Who demonstrate, in so many ways, that what we give back to the community cannot be measured in numbers.

Thank you.