John Gaede: Hello. My name is John Gaede, and I'm the Chief Information Officer here at San Juan Regional Medical Center. What a privilege and honor it is to serve at San Juan Regional Medical Center. As I've had the privilege of getting to know the community, the organization, the people, the mission, vision, and values that we share in this organization, I'm going to characterize San Juan Regional as a gem.

Our location in the Four Corners area, we're not part of some big conglomerate. We're a stand-alone, not-for-profit hospital here for our community, for the Four Corners area. What a joy. As we integrate into the community and I've been doing healthcare and healthcare IT for the last 30 years or so and come out of a clinical background as a medical technologist, I see what we're doing here and the work we're doing, and it is absolutely a gem and it's an honor and privilege to serve alongside all of you in the day in day out what we do here at San Juan Regional Medical Center.

The topic that I want to talk to you today about is the power of positivity, living our core values. When I was thinking about the opportunity here at San Juan and as I got to know the organization and the people, since the end of February, when I got here, what does San Juan stand for? And what I've learned is that San Juan Regional, we're here, is a total commitment to our community. The people in this organization care for one another. Whether it's our clinicians, revenue cycle teams, information services, our ancillary departments, lab, radiology, and pharmacy, an incredible group of people dedicated for taking care of our community and the patients in our community.

In this context, we have times where we're faced with many challenges. It can be easy to be negative because of pressures at work or maybe even it's personal challenges at home. But if we pause and we think about our core values, if we think about the why, why we're here, when we think about the mission of the organization, betters our mission, improving lives through personalized health and care, or a vision statement, delivering world-class care, the privilege to be part of a team that says our vision is we want to deliver world-class care and we want to make life better for the communities that we have the privilege and honor to serve.

 We do that by embracing our core values, and this has been a learning process for me as I've been here at San Juan, but our core values of sacred trust, personal reverence, thoughtful anticipation, creative vitality, and team accountability. When I think about those, I think about the why, the mission. It's our patients, it's patient care. And from an IT perspective, it's about how do we empower our operations teams, our clinical teams, our providers, nurses, respiratory therapists, dietary, any of the supporting services. How do we empower you all with the tools that you need to do your job and to do it well? Well, when we embrace our values, what I've learned is if I really focus on that mission of our patient and put the patient at the center of what we're doing and providing care, it transforms our perspective.

Let me walk through just each one of our values. And just stress how that impacts the work we're doing here at San Juan. So, the first one, sacred trust, doing the right thing for the patient no matter what. When we get out of bed in the morning, we have the joy and privilege in healthcare of knowing that we can make a difference in people's lives. We can set aside the politics. We can set aside the distractions and know that we're here to do the right thing for each and every patient, what greater value is there than that?

Personal reverence, knowing that as I participate in the work we're doing here in the organization where we honor the difference in each and every person, recognizing that each person is uniquely made, uniquely gifted, and the value that they bring to the conversation and to enriching our lives.

And then, thoughtful anticipation, recognizing that all of us are human. We all have chinks in our armor. And we're prepared to learn and always strive to do the work we're doing better the next time, making a difference each time.

And then, creative vitality gives us the opportunity to look at things in new and energetic ways. Going to our colleagues and having a conversation and saying, "How do we do this better? How can we think about this differently? How can we change that experience that the patient has when they come on to our campus or when they come into our clinic, wherever it might be?"

And finally, team accountability, recognizing that the work we do is teamwork. There's no lone rangers here. We rely on each other, and we rely on each area of the hospital partnering together to provide the quality care that we want to provide for our patients at San Juan. I'm passionate about mission, vision, and values because it explains the why we get out of bed, and then it explains how we're going to do our work, how we're going to go about doing our work.

When we get together, and again, when things get tough and it's easy to say the negative about another person or about the organization, we now have an opportunity to remind ourselves that we're here for our patients. We're here to partner with our colleagues and improve the care and the impact to our community.

The result will be a healthier, more supportive workplace, and then also a healthier community. So by acknowledging our challenges and focusing on our commitment to our patients and having the patient be at the heart of what we're doing, and letting our core values be our guide and the way we're going to treat one another, and the way we're going to think about the organization and our community, we can build that culture of encouragement and support that it takes to deliver healthcare in 2024 and beyond. Thank you and enjoy the rest of your day.