Massini: Community driving force behind expansion
Penn State Health CEO Steve Massini sent the following email to employees on Monday:
Dear Colleagues,
I always appreciate when Penn State Health employees and patients share their perspectives regarding our care. Over the past year, I’ve gained a new perspective as my own family has faced health challenges and turned to our health system for care.
My sister underwent treatment at Penn State Cancer Institute. Few moments have been more meaningful than when she rang the bell after her final chemotherapy in February. This past month, my wife was a patient at Penn State Health Milton S. Hershey Medical Center for nearly a week. I was grateful for the excellent care she received and equally grateful that we could get that care 15 minutes from our home.
For me, these two experiences reinforced the importance of Penn State Health’s commitment to make care more accessible, convenient and affordable.
In an interview last week, a reporter asked me a question I’m sure many of you have been asked: why is Penn State Health building two community hospitals, potentially acquiring Holy Spirit Health System, and expanding our number of primary and specialty care practices across the region? Don’t we have enough providers in this market?
My response was, we are doing what our patients and our community asked us to do. As you may have heard me say many times – who is it that we want taking care of our friends, family and neighbors?
Most of my communications the past six months have focused on COVID-19. But even amid the pandemic, Penn State Health has been moving forward with Highmark Health in our strategy to build a community health network where individuals within our core market of Berks, Cumberland, Dauphin, Lancaster and Lebanon counties can access our primary care within 10 minutes, our specialty care within 20 minutes and one of our acute care hospitals within 30 minutes of their home.
And, we now have a new component to this strategy – virtual health. One of the pandemic’s silver linings has been the rapid expansion of our telehealth endeavors. Patients have told us they appreciate the convenience, but virtual care is also good for our health system as it expands our referral base for our hospitals and outpatient practices.
We committed to ensuring that when families are facing a health crisis, they don’t have to travel hours for complex care. If our community hospitals cannot meet their needs, our academic medical center can. For example, Hershey Medical Center’s heart transplant program has the best survival rate of any heart transplant program in Pennsylvania. Our Children’s Hospital is ranked among the nation’s best, and Penn State Cancer Institute offers advanced therapies including CAR T-cell therapy.
We committed to ensuring patients have access to cutting-edge clinical trials close to home through our collaboration with Penn State College of Medicine.
We committed to helping people improve their quality of life, reducing the prevalence of chronic disease and giving children a healthier start through our many partnerships with insurers, private practice physicians, schools, businesses and community organizations.
And while State College is outside our core market, our colleagues there fulfill our commitment to another community that is close to our hearts – Penn State. We are honored to care for our university’s workforce, students and all who live in and around Centre County.
Penn State Health faces growing competition. But this is our community, and the people who live here are our loved ones and neighbors. Their well-being is the driving force behind our investments in our community health network as well as our academic medical center at Hershey.
I’ve never been more proud of Penn State Health nor more committed to our role in this community. Thank you for being a part of it.
Steve Massini
Chief Executive Officer
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