Donna Thompson serves as Chief Executive Officer at Access Community Health Network.
Donna will serve on the panel "Women in Leadership: Journeys of Re-Invention, Rebound and Resiliency" at Becker's Hospital Review 12th Annual Meeting. As part of an ongoing series, Becker's is talking to healthcare leaders who plan to speak at the conference, which will take place in Chicago from April 25-28, 2022.
To learn more about the conference and Donna's sessions, click here.
Q: What are your top priorities for 2022?
Donna Thompson: As the medical home to more than 180,000 patients each year, my team and I are focusing on getting our patients re-engaged in preventative care. Throughout this pandemic, we know that people have not been keeping up with their well visits or critical preventative screenings like mammograms and colonoscopies. As has been reported nationwide, we believe we will see a sharp increase in more serious cases of heart disease, cancers, and chronic conditions. ACCESS serves 16 out of the 20 most medically underserved communities in Chicago, and pre- pandemic our patients already faced many racial and ethnic health disparities. In fact, according to the Chicago Department of Public Health’s 2021 Data Brief on the State of Health for Black Chicagoans, the current life expectancy among Blacks is more than nine years lower than that of non-Blacks. The diabetes-related death rate alone among Blacks is 70% higher than among non-Blacks.
Together with health systems across Chicago, ACCESS pledged to address racism as a public health crisis. Internally, we have begun to work on focused strategic initiatives to address structural racism and health inequities, which includes training our entire workforce to become trauma-informed. Through a State of Illinois’ transformation grant, ACCESS recently joined a collaborative of health care providers and community partners to improve health outcomes on the West side of Chicago. Our goal is to adopt more collaborative care models to better align the services we provide with the critical work done by our trusted community partners.
As we move towards post-pandemic recovery, we are also looking to continue to innovate and leverage all the learnings that we gained throughout this pandemic. From continuing to optimize our telehealth services to leveraging our EMR platform to engage patients between visits, we hope to continue to invest in our technology platforms to optimize our patient experience, address social determinants of health and directly impact the health outcomes of the communities we serve.
Finally, we have a strong focus on workforce recruitment and retention. This pandemic has stretched our industry’s collective workforce in unimaginable ways, and it goes beyond a war for talent. Similar to the communities we serve, health care workers have all experienced some level of trauma. For ACCESS, we know we must focus on the behavioral health needs of our workforce and begin to address key issues such as burnout, depression, and work/life balance. We know that moving forward, we must address these issues if we want to continue to be an employer of choice.
Q: How do you plan to pivot strategies this year to better serve patients?
DT: Given that many of the communities we serve continue to experience higher COVID rates in both positivity and mortality, we will continue our efforts to test and vaccinate as many area residents as possible. As a health system, we are concerned about the predicted higher incidences of cancer, heart disease and chronic conditions as one more grave consequence of this pandemic. Therefore, we are focused on getting our patients and area residents back to their medical home for preventative screenings and other critical care gaps. ACCESS serves 16 out of the 20 most medically underserved communities in Chicago, and pre-pandemic our patients already faced many racial and ethnic health disparities. In fact, according to the Chicago Department of Public Health’s 2021 Data Brief on the State of Health for Black Chicagoans, the current life expectancy among Blacks is more than nine years lower than that of non-Blacks. The diabetes-related death rate alone among Blacks is 70% higher than among non-Blacks.
Beyond our patients’ physical health, we have also invested in our behavioral health services, including expanding our Medication Assisted Recovery (M.A.R.) program to 15 health centers across our network. Understanding the devastating impact the pandemic has had on our children, we have also invested in more pediatric behavioral health services.
We are also investing in foundational initiatives to improve our patient experience and work to address racial and ethnic health disparities. From training our workforce to become trauma-informed to working more collaboratively with other providers and community-based organizations to address social determinants of health, we are focused on improving the health outcomes of our vulnerable patient population.
Q: What will the lasting legacy of COVID-19 be on the healthcare system?
DT: As a leader in community health for 30 years, ACCESS has always dedicated its mission to serving the Chicagoland area’s most underserved and racially diverse communities. Unfortunately, COVID illuminated the long-overlooked, and often ignored, health inequities of America’s communities of color. Throughout this pandemic, the communities we serve had higher COVID rates of positivity, hospitalizations, and ultimately, mortality. This is due to the inequalities brought on by decades of institutional racism, which has left our communities with severe health and economic disparities. As a leader in community health, ACCESS understands these issues and continues to work to improve health equity in our communities. Many of our staff live and work in the neighborhood they serve. They are culturally sensitive and know what challenges our patients face on a daily basis. That’s truly the power of community health centers and why collectively community health centers serve more than 26 million people annually. That’s also why ACCESS was one of the first health systems in Illinois tapped to administer COVID vaccinations. As we continue through each wave of this pandemic into recovery, we will continue to keep a pulse on what our patients need and continue to innovate our care delivery model to effectively support those needs.
Q: What advice do you have for emerging healthcare leaders today?
DT: Throughout this pandemic, I have had the privilege to see many new leaders emerge at ACCESS. As I have told them throughout this unprecedented time in our history, they must take the time to document their journey. One day, people will ask them how they got through COVID, and it’s critical that they remember those pearls of wisdom as they continue to grow and evolve as leaders. I also urge people to understand that taking risks is essential to their development. It's often when we go into unchartered waters that we find out just we are made of. Also, when you stretch yourself and are able to be part of a team, you will grow in so many new ways. From learning how to effectively communicate with others and exposing yourself to other areas of an organization to thinking through solutions as a team, it’s a powerful skillset to master. For example, one of our nurse practitioners took the initiative early on to help custom design our community testing sites, which allowed her to collaborate closely with nearly every department in our organization. By collaborating effectively on that project and earning the respect of her colleagues, she now has co-led our COVID response taskforce for more than two years. There have been many challenges along the way but, she has grown in so many rewarding ways.