Cook County Health (CCH) Board Meeting
August 26, 2022     

Cook County Health CFO Cassara presented the 3-year financial forecast which supports the 2023-2025 Strategic Plan approved earlier this year. It was developed in concert with the proposed FY2023 CCH budget which was also approved at today's meeting.
Accrual basis budgets show a deficit of $41M for 2023; $48M for 2024 and $47M for 2025.  CFO Cassara commented that closing these “deficits will require management interventions”.

Support to the Health System from Cook County totals $228M in 2023 including $80M CCH pension allocation and $148M Cook County tax allocation for health services, correctional and public health departments.

Cook County Health Heart Institute:

• Is a new CCH initiative to develop a comprehensive, academic, world-class, equitable, cardiac care program spanning from prevention to complex heart disease. 
• Radiology and Cardiology disciplines have been collaborating since 2021 on new interventional services including balloon valvuloplasty (of heart valve) and transcatheter aortic valve replacement
• Outpatient access to cardiology subspecialties (Cardiovascular genetics, heart failure, lipid disorders and electrophysiology among others) in suburban locations (Blue Island) Sengstacke at Provident Hospital with other locations being considered.

Monkeypox:

• CEO Rocha, Dr. Welbel, CCH Division Chair, Infection and Hospital Epidemiology, and Dr. Hasbrouck, Director of CC Department Public Health gave a data-intense update on the monkeypox cases in Cook County (800 cases in CC with 45 hospitalizations of which 77 cases and 7 hospitalizations were CCH cases)
• More information about Monkeypox can be found on the CCH website 

Observer - Susan Kern, MD

Cook County Health (CCH) Board Of Directors Meeting ​
July 22, 2022 

Human Resources Report:
Currently Stroger Hospital is operating with a staff level of 65% of budget. This has led to adding $75 million to the outside staffing budget for the remainder of the fiscal year and has had some effect on Quality metrics. It also has led to increased resignations of existing staff. The Human Resource committee presented their statistics and the current hiring is barely keeping up with the staff losses and not helping make up for past separations. Before starting the new goal of hiring 400 new employees between 5/16 and 9/1, it has taken 36.8 days on average from the time an offer has been requested to the offer being made to the applicant. 450 offers were made and 317 were hired. The ultimate goal has been to cut the 36.8 days to THREE days. From May 16 to July 22, 220 candidates accepted offers. Since 94 were internal hires, the net result was 126 new employees.
The hiring initiatives are as follows:

• Offers made within 72 hours
• 20 nurses sourced per week
• Train 100% Hiring Managers
• 6 Hiring Events by Sept 1, 2022     200+ positions    
• Increase frequency of new employee orientation by 50% as needed
• To help with this a contract was made with a third recruiting company

Appointments/Recognitions:

• Arnold Turner has been named Chief Hospital Executive for Provident Hospital, Aaron Galeener has been named Chief Administrative office of Health Plan Services and Karolina Duszczak will be Interim chief operating officer of Health Plan Services.
• US News and World Report named Stroger as a high performing hospital in four categories: Chronic obstructive pulmonary disease • Pneumonia • Heart attack • Heart failure.
• Chicago Magazine recognized Dr. Elizabeth Marcus as a top doctor for breast oncology. Dr Mike Alebich was identified as an emerging leader by Health & Medicine Policy Research Group.  
• Becker’s Hospital Report recognized Andrea Gibson as Great Health System Chief Strategy Officer and Linh Dang as Outstanding Health System Chief Experience Officers.

Public Health Update:

• An overview on Monkeypox was presented along with the midyear budget review.
• Dr LaMar Hasbrouk (CEO of Cook County Department of Public Health) presented the quarterly report from the Cook County Department of Public Health- Building Healthy Communities: Initiative and funding process overview.
• The CCH board signed on to the Cook County Board’s PROPOSED RESOLUTION REGARDING AN ASSAULT WEAPONS BAN.

Committee Reports:

• Managed Care: As of 7/5/2022 County Care has 32.6% of market share, up from 32.5% the previous month but the actual number of members is 433,248 compared to 434,021 last month. Initial target was set to develop $50M in reserves in FY 2022. To date, total reserves have been funded at $75M. The public health emergency has been set to end October 15, 2022. At that time redetermination is set to begin 60 days later and 1/12 of membership will be looked at each month.
  
• Audit and Compliance: A review of the CCH Compliance Program & Regulatory Environment was presented. It included a presentation on the Boards fiduciary and oversight obligations. 
  
• Quality and Patient Safety: Provident CAP (College of American Pathologists) Survey occurred May 12, 2022.  There were three low-level citations and actions were submitted and received acceptance of    those actions on June 30th.
  
• Finance: On an accrual basis, interim financials show that CCH ended May with a $36.1M positive variance to budget. On a cash basis, the County’s preliminary cash report on revenues and expenses shows a $225.5M positive variance primarily due to the timing difference of CountyCare PMPM payments impacting the revenue and claims payments impacting expenses. While there was a lot of discussion on the $75 million  request for Vaya Workforce Solutions, it was approved.

Observer: Lisa Slankard