Legislators' Feedback Action Plan

This edition of our Open Letter will address the feedback you provided to area legislators about North Mississippi Medical Center. As mentioned in the August 22nd open letter, we will be providing status reports on our progress. Please be assured that we have not stopped working on the issues you raised, but we do want to update you on where we are today. The issues and our progress are as follows:

Change in attitude - We will reconnect with community - How?

• Produce Open Letters to the Community in the newspaper
• Develop a culture of open communication and "no secrets"
• Increase visibility in community
• Continue development of servant leadership culture
• Conduct a "How to do business with NMMC" seminar
• Full Board ad hoc committee formed to address "conflict of interest" questions

Invest less money in buildings and more in staffing

• Hired 100 new nurses - July 2004
• External building projects on hold for one year
• Communicate better with community about what we're building and why
• Communicate our progress in staffing and share how our staffing relates to other medical centers

Resolve BlueCross issue

• In process - Open Letter September 5, 2004
• We are willing to go to mediation and are awaiting BlueCross' answer

Health Link ownership restructuring

• Health Link is a contracting entity - it has no assets or liabilities. Because of that, providers can go directly to insurers/payors to obtain contracts
• The Health Link Board includes Magnolia Regional and Gilmore Memorial Hospital

Change billing policies - nameless, faceless computer

• Reengineering our "request for billing information" process
• Revamping our charity care and collection policies
• The billing process has been outsourced to another company in order to produce clearer and
more patient friendly bills
• We are providing discounts to BlueCross-MS; BlueCross-AL; and CHIPS (federal program administered by BlueCross-MS) patients
 

Establish a community advocate

• Hired - her name will be announced this week - begins work September 13, 2004

Thank you in advance for your support and the valuable feedback you've provided. We are honored to serve you and we look forward to reconnecting with you, our community. The next Open Letter will share our recently received employee satisfaction results. We are really excited to share these great results with you.

September 12, 2004