HJNO Mar/Apr 2024

HEALTHCARE JOURNAL OF NEW ORLEANS I  MAR / APR 2024 13 Editor Several years ago, St. Tammany Parish Hospital changed its name to St. Tammany Health System. What does it now mean to be a health system? Coffman I'm going to take you back to 2019 and really my hire in July 2018. While the board had asked me to look at the mission, vision, and values just to make a decision on whether we needed to refresh or not, which we ended up doing, one of the things that was apparent to me was that while we are very proud of our flagship St. Tammany Parish Hospital, when you looked at our footprint across the northern and western portions of St. Tammany Parish, we had grown exponentially over time. And if you look at our system of care, we're taking care of patients in the community long before they need hospitalization — hopefully, trying to prevent hospitalization. We obviously have inpatient, outpatient, and ambulatory services and work with our partners on the post-acute side. We cover the full continuum. With the main campus right here in downtown Covington and nearly 25 offsite locations that either provide services or support services, we had outgrown the name hospital. I think it became a very natural decision for myself and the board of commissioners to think about us in a broader context. In addition to that, because of the growth of our community in terms of population growth starting post Hurricane Katrina, we have become a regional destination for care. We get patients from all over. It made sense to consider some alternative than St. Tam- many Parish Hospital to help to brand or define us. Editor St. Tammany Health System has forged partnerships with various health entities, such as Ochsner. What is the importance of these partnerships, and how do these collaborations benefit the community and the hospital? Coffman St. Tammany prides itself on partnerships, so let me start there. Why did we partner with Ochsner? This obviously predates me, but I've learned a lot about the why behind it through the years. St. Tammany was in, and still is in, a very positive position, both in operational performance and financial performance. But the world was changing, so scale mattered. They began to look at potential partnerships from a position of strength and extraordinary quality outcomes. We rank in the top 5% in the nation in many areas — quality, safety, and service. We have a AA bond rating with a stable outlook, so we're very strong financially. Anytime you're looking to make a change like that, you want to do it from a position of strength. They interviewed with a number of different organizations around the area and decided that Ochsner made the best sense. Ochsner was about to build a hospi- tal in this market. So, through the partner- ship, we became their hospital of choice for northern and western St. Tammany Parish. At the same time, they were looking at us thinking, well, why do we need to build a hospital when we have one right here and their performance is so high? It really was a great marriage and still is when you look at our ability to serve the community in a much bigger way by adding to the market additional primary care providers, specialty and subspecialty care, and value-based care. We partner a lot together on value-based care, improving health outcomes together. Editor Tell me about this partnership with Ochsner. How do you stay independent when you're in partnership with them? What does that look like? Coffman That is a great question. We are, as you know, a hospital service district. And because we are a hospital service district, being the community provider of choice really matters to us. Something the board said from the very onset of the partnership was that while we were the very first partner of Ochsner, we were able to craft an agreement between the two parties that really is uniquely different than all of the other partnerships that they have forged since that time. Our board of commissioners take their role in governing a hospital service district very seriously. We do not accept a millage from the parish. We are financially sound. What they set forth as their guiding principle, which stands today, is that they wanted to remain independent and autonomous with their own identity regardless of a partnership. When you think about the partnership, there's still so much that we can align in terms of our clinical service lines. That's really the sweet sauce. Prior to the partner- ship, we struggled to get neurological cover- age, whether it was neurology or neurosur- gery. Now we have a robust neurosciences program here at St. Tammany Health Sys- tem. We partnered with them to create Och- sner Health for Children. Their physicians cover our pediatric ICU here at St. Tam- many Health System. So, you can build on the strength of the scale that they have with- out losing your identity. Editor One of the reasons we were told independent hospitals opted to merge with or to join larger systems is the cost of technology. “People hear me say all the time that the workforce is our greatest asset, and that's truly the reality of what's happening here. They come to work every day with a desire to make a difference, and they do so in a very collaborative spirit.”