Keeping Up - What's New

WCHN Strategic Plan

You asked, in the recent Satisfaction Survey, to know more about the plans and reasoning behind the actions of our network. Attached is a copy of Vision 2020, Western Connecticut Health Network's Strategic Plan for 2015-2020. Vision 2020 is our roadmap and will guide us as we prepare for population health and the shift from fee-for-service to value-based care by developing healthier communities and transforming the delivery of health care.

The strategic plan offers an overview of the changing health care landscape, the competencies required to succeed and the specific goals we must achieve to realize our vision. Vision 2020 will help guide our organizational priorities, provide the basis for business planning and help determine how we allocate our resources. Each year, focused plans around physician partnership, quality, service and population health will help us get closer to our 2020 goal of managing the health of 500,000 lives. To date we’re at 80,489 lives – 16% of goal.

Across the Network, we have entered into several shared savings and patient-centered programs to help bridge the gap from volume to value based care. In July, Rowena Bergmans will share an update, including our bundled payments arrangement with CMS beginning July 1.

We’ll continue to highlight different aspects of the strategic plan in future editions of DOC-Line. In the meantime, please contact Sally Herlihy, VP, Planning at sally.herlihy@wchn.org with any comments or questions.

Click here to view Vision 2020, Western Connecticut Health Network's Strategic Plan for 2015-2020

Information Technology Update

Eric Jimenez, MD
Chief Medical Information Officer, WCHN

Dear Colleagues:

Over the last several weeks I have been meeting with some of you trying to identify the most common and troublesome IT issues that are making your work more difficult and time consuming. Below are the “common themes”:

• Difficult and poorly responsive access to our network applications
• Maintaining and updating multiple passwords that have to be changed frequently
• Voluminous and poorly summarized paperwork that is sent when a patient is discharged

We are addressing these issues with both short and long term solutions:

• The IT department has started deploying a new portal, which is not only more robust but will also dramatically improve performance. We will slowly add clinical applications after the testing and validation is complete. It will be fully operational in a 6 month time frame.
• Our present single sign on application will be upgraded, which will require only entering credentials once when you sign into the network and then allow seamless access to all the applications you are authorized to use. This upgrade will also allow the end user to change passwords without the Help Desk!
• We are reviewing the strict parameters set by governmental agencies that mandate the information that is sent out when a patient is discharged and the strict format we must adhere to. When our network moves to a single platform and as the interoperability standards mandated by Meaningful Use become more robust we will have more flexibility. In the meantime I will be reaching out to different groups trying to minimize and improve the “packaging” of the information.

We are committed to working with you to improve our IT functionality and effectiveness to better serve you and your patients.

Eric

Save the Dates

Quarterly Medical Staff Meetings

Danbury/New Milford Hospitals – Creasy Auditorium
September 17, 5:30 pm
November 12, 5:30 pm

Norwalk Hospital – Perkin Auditorium
July 28, 5:30 pm
October 28, 5:30 pm

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