Hello to all of my colleagues,

It has been an eventful summer. While our state is consumed by wildfires, and numerous wars continue to rage around the world, nothing quite compares when violence strikes close to home disrupting our sense of safety. As you may know, our dear colleague and front office staff, Michael Roque was attacked near his home on July 22 and continues to convalesce in the hospital. As of yesterday, we have raised 546 hours in donated vacation time to aid his recovery. Thank you for your continued generosity, and please share the resources linked below so that others can join in support.

It’s unifying moments like these, that remind me of our value of inclusion—knowing that our ability to realize our mission requires everyone to embrace diversity in the broadest sense and appreciate all points of view. We strive to treat our employees—the hands and heart of our organization—justly and respectfully, recognizing that a meaningful and humanizing work environment gives people a voice in matters affecting their work. It also respects and promotes their personal health and professional growth.

In this spirit of collaboration and transparency, below are a handful of voiced recommendations during last month’s staff luncheons with progress notes below. We invite you to share more of your valued feedback in the Press Ganey employee engagement survey arriving in your inbox on Monday, August 19th.

• Scripts for VA Patients: Clinic Management is identifying a clinic manager to assess what key items need to be included in scripts, help draft the scripts and then review with staff to make sure all key items have been addressed. Once approved, managers will train staff and launch per agreed upon go-live date.
• Overtime: We’re in the process of identifying why overtime is occurring. We will then review opportunities for improvement and brainstorm for potential solutions.
• Staffing Recruitment: We’re planning to incorporate updates in huddles to discuss high-level overviews of posted positions.
• Clinical Space: UCR Health has an expansion 5-year growth plan that includes growing more than 14 clinics as well as the expansion of services and specialties. We’re also transitioning Citrus Tower into a Multi-Specialty Clinic, with Primary Care relocating to San Bernardino, and creating a new location in Riverside.
• La Quinta Pediatrics Space: We’re exploring the impact of how pediatrics at the La Quinta Urgent Care will affect space and appointments at the clinic.

In addition to making our workspaces function better, there are also things we can do to keep ourselves healthy and focused on the good.

Sometimes our culture inside UCR Health can feel like a cocoon where outside influences seem far away. It is always our goal to make the space inside our walls safe, open and inclusive. To do that requires listening to one another, and that means bringing our true selves to work and being willing to share. These are the types of things that broaden our perspectives in relation to how we continue to build and create our culture. I’d like for us to think about being more inclusive of others’ perspectives, and more specifically, how we engage with others.

I believe it will make us better as a people, better as a UC, and finally, better as a country.

Thank you for being part of our future,