From the Desk of Becky Flood
October 17th through the 20th our Executive Team joined the Board of Directors in Park City Utah for a retreat. Besides conducting the October Board Meeting, much of the time was used to involve the board in the team building and strategic planning that took place here at Ashley with the Strategic Planning Team in August. The board approved the preliminary shell of the three-year strategic plan, the I-ACT Core Values (Integrity, Accountability, Compassion, and Total Commitment), and the Execution Road-map that I introduced to you in my August letter. Next we plan to have our facilitator, Beth Adkisson, facilitate half-day sessions to familiarize and engage employees from each department into this process.
In addition to the long days of meetings and planning, the board and the Executive Team visited Cirque Lodge treatment center in Sundance, Utah. While there, we experienced their Music, Equine, and Native American therapies as well as their extensive ropes course. This experience demonstrated for us several new ways that we can leverage our beautiful treatment environment into the daily care, healing, and spirituality of our programs both on the campus and in our IOP’s. This experience has fostered the board’s appreciation for Equine Therapy and we are looking at making this therapy a part of our clinical program in the near future.
September 30th marked the end of the first quarter of our 2019 Fiscal Year, and what a positive quarter it was! Financially, we are rapidly trending into positive territory. Our Upper Chesapeake Intensive Outpatient operation is now reporting a profit with significant year to year swings, and the number of patients served continues to increase. We expect the Elkton location to increase even more now that we are adding transportation services for our patients, and we are in the process of relocating our Bel Air location into larger quarters early next year. Year-to-date Inpatient census is up by twelve from the first quarter of last year at 108.5. Most importantly, through the hard work and commitment of our employees, we are creating more opportunities for people to receive quality care and get well.
I have more good news! Our September Patient Satisfaction continues on an upward positive trend and 98% of our patients would recommend Ashley to a family member or friend. As always, we still have a few areas where we can still improve, but we are excited for all of the recent changes to continue to better the patient experience.
I think that’s all the major news for now. We have a lot going on and I am so excited about the progress we are making. In closing, I want to thank you for all that you do!
Peace,
