Frank: ‘Our continued success is in your hands’
Joe Frank, interim president of Penn State Health St. Joseph, sent the following email to St. Joseph employees on Tuesday:
Since COVID-19 arrived in the Berks community in March, we’ve re-engineered a lot of processes to respond in a highly effective way to the many changes caused by this lingering virus. We should all be proud of that.
Your collectively nimble reaction was incredible not only for its clinical effectiveness, but also in the way it addressed this true public health disaster in a professional yet human way that served to calm an uncertain community.
The things we learned about ourselves — we are flexible, we are creative, we are committed to teamwork, we imagine new ways to solve old problems and develop innovative ways to solve new problems — are skills and behaviors with universal application. As we cope with the devastating effects that COVID-19 has had on our financial operations, applying these behaviors, day in and day out, will be key to our organizational recovery.
Consider some of our true pandemic successes, bolstered by the strength of being part of a larger health system, that enabled us to lead the Berks’ medical community’s response:
Within a matter of days, we supported community access to testing by creating a drive-thru COVID-19 testing site that has been continuously staffed since March.
Through careful planning and coordination, we managed the flow of patients with suspected or confirmed cases of COVID-19 and non-COVID patients, all while retooling our clinical practices to keep everyone safe.
We worked our supply chain to ensure we had the necessary supplies critical to protecting both staff and patients.
As part of a university-affiliated health system, we had early access to the anti-viral medication Remdesivir, as well as convalescent plasma therapy.
Our nursing and medical staff leadership collaborated with Berks County Commissioners to educate the community on the virus and preventive efforts. Our staff also participated in many media opportunities to help educate and calm the community.
It is important that we look to these successes as a way forward, especially knowing our future will continue to be challenged by this ongoing pandemic. The resourcefulness we have shown in this crisis will be crucial to our efforts to repair the impact the coronavirus has had on hospital operations and financial performance.
We continue to strengthen relations with our Penn State Health Community Practice Division doctors who are our fellow employees. We must also embrace independent physicians who choose to practice here. Their confidence in us inspires confidence in their patients. When their patients show up, we must ensure their experiences are driven by our core values of reverence, integrity, compassion and excellence. In practice these values mean we must see the humanity in the patient across from us, understanding they may be scared, sad, hurting, exhausted or angry. As we know, people are not always at their best when they are sick or injured. It’s our job, as caregivers and human beings, to engage patients where they are and understand what they are going through.
Your daily successes are cumulative; they add to the community dialog about what is unique to St. Joseph in a way that makes people seek us out for care.
In the weeks ahead, members of senior leadership will team up to round throughout our many different work areas. Their objective is simple: to be available to you and to listen to your ideas of how we can become better, how we can think beyond our own team, how we can gain and keep physicians and patients and be more responsive to their needs and how we can be inventive in thought and action. Rounds begin Thursday, Oct. 8, and will continue routinely. They are meant to help you be comfortable with speaking candidly and to challenge each of us to find ways to continue to provide quality care and improve the physician and patient experience in all care settings.
I am grateful for your efforts during the pandemic and for how diligently you have worked during our recovery period. We are committed to exploring all the ways we can ensure our future success by building on what we have accomplished so far. Our continued success is in your hands and in your daily interactions with each other, our patients and our physicians.
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