As we prepare for the long weekend and the unofficial end of summer, I would ask you to take a moment and reflect on all of our accomplishments over the last several months as an organization and as individuals.
To be truly innovative requires changing the way we think, the way we do business, and our approach to the challenges and opportunities ahead of us. To that end, we are aggressively moving toward a cultural change that takes us from a health care system that focuses on healing the sick and injured toward a culture that embraces sustaining health first and preventing illness and injury. We want to become an organization that is leading the nation in making the healthy choice the easy and socially expected choice.
So the question becomes how do we get there? We must work to make the individual changes that become the collective whole. We have to actively promote safe environments that embrace innovation, empower our personnel to do greater things, promote learning at all levels (both formal and in our daily practices), that deliver for our beneficiaries and especially our war fighters, and achieves success in the goals we set for ourselves.
Together, we are strong and have the opportunity to become the gold standard in health systems and move the bar from healthcare to health and I thank you for everything you do to make the military health system one of the most innovative, forward thinking systems in the nation.
Stay safe and consider as you embark for the weekend, is there a small change you should make in your own health that helps you become the model of what we want our 9.7 million beneficiaries to become?
Thank you for the tremendous work you do. Happy Labor Day.