Welcome to Memorial Healthcare System’s 2020 Annual Report – a different kind of Report for an extraordinary fiscal year (May 1, 2019 through April 30, 2020).
For its first three quarters, Memorial was having a year much like our others, focused on serving patients and families and, in our particular case, moving health forward on a foundation of excellence.
We enjoyed many successes and advances: reaching more members of our community with preventive primary care, performing groundbreaking neurological procedures, and turning hope into reality via innovative – and, importantly, locally available – research trials, just to name a few. Those accomplishments, statistics and major milestones, plus engaging patient stories, are all documented here, to help illustrate our continuing commitment to healing the body, mind and spirit of those we touch.
Then, when the coronavirus pandemic began, we were called upon to respond as never before. You’ll find those stories in here, too, but here’s a bit of a spoiler: Thanks to our longtime focus on safety, quality and service, when it comes to COVID-19, Memorial has been able to rise to the occasion on every level.
These pages will tell you:
- How the pandemic highlighted our total commitment to safety.
Over the years, Memorial has consistently earned top-notch safety grades from The Leapfrog Group. (Memorial Hospital Miramar, in fact, has scored across-the-board A grades from Leapfrog since 2012.) Then, when COVID arrived, we had to meet the challenges of keeping our patients, their families, our community, and our co-workers safe. We were able to do so with precision and creativity because we have a workplace environment that values teamwork, trust, and putting safety first. - How we put clinical integration to work.
In normal times, being clinically integrated benefits those we serve by improving the quality and efficiency of care. As a public healthcare system, we are responsible financial stewards by containing costs. An emergency like the pandemic requires providers to work faster, smarter and better, and with the clinically integrated foundation laid by our 305-member Memorial Physician Group and our regional Memorial Health Network, Memorial was, and is, well-positioned to respond. - The ways we stepped up to solve problems with the latest technology.
Memorial has always striven to be a destination for technological advancements, and, as you’ll see in this Report, our IT team wasted no time in providing the vital technological infrastructure necessary for a comprehensive pandemic response. From making operations possible at Memorial’s COVID testing site at CB Smith Park – cited as a model for the state and country – to providing hundreds of iPads for communicating with ICU and other patients, our IT professionals vividly demonstrated their personal contribution to our community’s well-being. - How we made our “systemness” the core of our COVID response.
Since our inception, Memorial has moved proactively from a hospital-centric organization to one that promotes systemness – taking one approach, as a regional healthcare provider, to distributing services, increasing efficiency and reducing costs. The onset of the coronavirus crisis gave us unique opportunities to put that systemness into action. Every decision we made, both internally and externally, occurred with all members of our Memorial family and our South Broward community represented. Systemness will continue to serve us in the months and years ahead.
It’s been quite a journey, and as you read this, the challenges remain. But whether our times are ordinary or extraordinary, you can be sure that Memorial’s commitment to patient- and family-centered care will always be the basis of the services we provide. Thank you for your support – it helps us meet the tests of today, and inspires us to face the exciting opportunities of tomorrow.
