A New Look for Soldiers’

Hello all,

Earlier in May, we launched our new blog, Inside OSMH.  I am excited to the first post with content based on the big news this week, our year in review  and our new look as a hospital.   I want to use this opportunity to provide a look inside OSMH about how we balance the many competing priorities in our organization.

This week at our regular board meeting, we reported on the 2018-19 fiscal year.   It’s now official – we have another year of balancing our budget.   The financial health of an organization is important – that is how we continue to serve our community.

But it isn’t everything.   Finances alone cannot be considered in isolation of quality.   At the same meeting, we talked about the significant improvement in Emergency Department Wait times by 36% in January to March 2019 thanks to the opening of the Way Home Unit on H2 and significant efforts in patient flow by all areas of the organization.

We also saw improvements in medication reconciliation, hand hygiene as well as continued low infection rates.     We still have work to do in other areas, but I am pleased with the way we balanced our budgets while keeping quality front and centre.   Thank you to all the staff, credentialed staff and volunteers for contributing to this shared success story this past year.

The board meeting also included an update on this current year’s financial outlook.    I appreciate all areas are having to find new ways to be efficient in order to reach our target for this upcoming year.   We remain committed to continuing this balanced approach to finances and quality.

The MOHLTC has confirmed base funding for additional surgical volume and surge beds.   This has increased our hospital capacity and reduced some of the uncertainty from year to year.   That translates to more money to hire more staff to operate more beds.  What it doesn’t do is eliminate the need to run our existing beds more efficiently.   We still need to find the overall savings with new ways of delivering excellent, compassionate care.

The other big news this week is our new look.  If you haven’t already, please click here to get to a 90 second video.   I have seen it over a dozen times and it still gives me chills!

I have been talking with people across the organization since the big reveal and there are 2 consistent questions:

Question 1.   Why Purple?
Answer.   Because it isn’t blue.  We wanted to be bold and different.  Purple comes across well in both paper and digital media.

Question 2.   Why spend money when we are focused on finding efficiencies?
Answer.   This is a fair question.  I will start by stating the cost to retain the designer, do the community and hospital consultation and the creative work for the logo was under $15K.  This was a shared initiative with the Hospital and Foundation with use in other projects such as our website design, which is another great success story this week, as well as informing future fundraising opportunities.   The positive free media coverage alone will generate donations that should more than cover the costs.  We are also phasing in the logo over time as supplies run out and took the opportunity to upgrade to energy efficient lights when the outdoor signs were switched.

I appreciate that even some may still not like purple and still believe we spent too much.  I wanted to let you that we put a lot of thought behind any investment we make in our organization to ensure we are getting good value.  I believe we found the right balance with displaying a modernized, professional look for our organization that connects us to our community and matches the great care our care providers deliver.

I hope this provides a look Inside OSMH with some of the recent news in the organization.

P.S.   Thanks to the Wednesday afternoon IMRS staff for the suggestions on topics for this blog.  I appreciate the feedback!

Thanks,

Carmine.