Dr. Michael Karf Introduces UK HealthCare's Strategic Plan 2015-2020 (Full Transcript)

Speaker 1: Hello, I'm Dr. Michael Karf, I'm the Executive Vice President for Health Affairs at UK, and I'm here to introduce our strategic planning process that we're embarking upon, Strategic Plan 2015 to 2020. In 2015, it's time for us to update this plan. We've grown from 19,000 discharges to this year will be around 37,500, maybe even reach 38,000 discharges. We've doubled. I don't know of any other major academic medical center or hospital that's been able to double. We now think that we need to go back and make sure that our subspecialty programs, our service lines in these various areas are robust and can survive into the future and stay competitive and function at the very highest level so that the kind of quaternary care, the transplant programs, cancer programs are every bit as good as one could receive at a Vanderbilt or a Washington University or a Cleveland Clinic or a Mayo Clinic. We also need to continue to build these relationships with these community hospitals. We need to build systems that will integrate things. So the strategic plan will have several different areas that it will focus on. We will take a look at all of our clinical services and say, how do we make sure that they stay strong? How do we make sure that they're at the very best level? How do we make sure that they have robustness, that they don't fall apart if one person leaves or another or a couple of people leave? We will also take a look at our partnerships and say, how do we expand them? How do we secure them for the long haul? And how do we build this coherent network that will serve Kentucky and beyond to ensure our future? And we'll also focus on the systems it'll take to make these partnerships a real network. A lot of people will be involved in this process. This is a healthcare as a team sport and planning for healthcare as a team sport. So we will be looking for input from physicians, from nurses, from other staff, from housekeepers. This has to be a program that people not only contribute to, but also buy into. And we're going to have to be very aggressive once we've come up with a plan and implementing it. You know, for me, this has been an incredible 11 years. I would have never imagined that we could have grown as much as we have over this time period. I could never imagine that we could have built the programs that we have. We've made tremendous strides in our quality scores. I'm very proud that we won the Rising Star Award and sort of a composite score from UHC. We went from the 50s to number 12. That couldn't have happened without your commitment, the commitment of the faculty, the commitment of the staff, the commitment of every single individual who works at UK HealthCare. I must give you my heartfelt thanks, and I must also say not only am I proud of you, but I am awed at what you've been able to accomplish. Thank you very much.