When the winners for the first annual CommonSpirit Health Physician Enterprise Vision Awards were selected, Trinity Health System was well-represented.

Three of our providers received awards in the Innovation category, and Trinity Health System had four division winners, while Trinity Hospital Twin City in Dennison, Ohio, had one division winner for Patient Experience. 

Two ceremonies were recently hosted by Trinity Health System to honor these award recipients, one in Dennison and one in Steubenville. Pictures from these events are included in this post.

What are the CommonSpirit Health Physician Enterprise Vision Awards?

The annual CommonSpirit Health Physician Enterprise Vision Awards program is intended to recognize and celebrate patient-focused care and clinical excellence throughout the Physician Enterprise. 

It was developed by a diverse and multidisciplinary Physician Enterprise team of regional and local voices passionate about recognition programs, including providers, HR, quality, transformation, and patient experience. 

The Physician Enterprise Vision Awards brings our sites together to share accomplishments, celebrate wins, and learn from each other to ensure best practices are being implemented across the system. 

“These awards are truly about the community and about Trinity’s belief in the power of humankindness and improving health for all through innovation,” Gennie Arbogast, Market Director for Orthopedics and Sports Medicine, said. 

What are the award categories?

There are four awards open to nomination:

• Academic: Recognizing how we’re advancing the practice of medicine through key research of published studies. CommonSpirit Health’s professional training, post-graduate medical education programs, and academic partnerships position us to provide the highest level of care across our ministry.
• Compassion: Recognizing impactful demonstrations of empathy and kindness that exemplify and expand our vision and positively impact employees, providers, and patients alike across our ministry. 
• Innovation: Recognizing a new mindset, workflow, method, idea, or product that accelerates our vision and impacts employees, providers, and patients alike across our ministry, improving clinical care. This award is open to both individuals and teams.
• Inspiration: Recognizing an action/behavior that is closely aligned with our vision and positively impacts people/programs/clinical care in unique ways.

Two awards are quantitative and are given based on performance metrics from the past year. 

• Patient Experience: Recognizing highest performers and most improved for key patient experience metrics.
• Quality: Recognizing highest performers and most improved clinical teams for key quality metrics.

And the winners are:

Innovation Award 

• Orthopedics and Sports Medicine: Kumar Amin, M.D., Medical Director

“Despite the challenges of the pandemic, Trinity Health System’s joint replacement program has transformed the delivery of care to outpatient joint replacement surgery, including partial and total knee and hip replacements,” Kumar Amin, M.D., Medical Director, said. “More than 80% of the patients go home on the same day of surgery while still achieving excellent outcomes and low complication rates that beat national averages and standards, including low rates of infection, blood clots, and readmission to the hospital.”

Dr. Amin praised the work of Dr. Joshua Boni, who joined the orthopedic service in 2021. He said Dr. Boni has added the ability to perform direct anterior hip replacement, extending the program’s emphasis on faster and less painful recovery after surgery. 

“Trinity Health System creates a worry-free, seamless experience for the patients by integrating a multidisciplinary team, including timely medical evaluation by heart specialists, nurse practitioners, and PAs to help with medical concerns before and after surgery, modern regional anesthesia techniques, and rapid mobilization physical therapy,” Dr. Amin explained. “State-of-the-art joint replacement surgery and techniques are being provided in a hometown setting, with the additional advantage of having the personal touch of local providers ready and available to help with patients’ concerns, which cannot be matched by larger systems.”

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• Interventional and Structural Heart: Triston Smith, M.D., and Gregory Suero, M.D. 

“The Trinity Health System cardiovascular program seeks to provide the most up-to-date and cutting-edge care in a safe and compassionate manner,” Triston Smith, M.D., said. “We understand that to accomplish this, we must be innovative in the way we deliver that care, be it through diagnostic or therapeutics. The field of cardiovascular care is advancing at a rapid pace. Our challenge is to keep up with those advancements while at the same time positioning ourselves to take advantage of diagnostic technologies as they emerge.”

The end goal of innovation is improving people’s lives, Matt Grimshaw, President and CEO of Trinity Health System, said. “In healthcare, that can mean providing the right tools for quality care, improving the processes used by physicians and nurses, as well as adding new services for patients. Over the past 24 months, Trinity Health System’s Innovation winners from the Structural Heart Program and our Orthopedics Program have dedicated their time and effort to advancing the care we provide, improving outcomes, and shortening the length of time patients need to stay in the hospital. I would go even further to say that Trinity Health System is competitive with anyone in the country in these two service lines.”

Patient Experience: Best Performance Clinical Award 

• Trinity Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation: Milton Swaby, M.D.
• Trinity Pediatrics: Amjad Alkaed, M.D.
• Trinity Primary Care: Mark Kissinger, D.O.; Amy Dorsey, N.P.; Melissa Buska, N.P.; Joy Irvin, N.P. 

• Twin City Specialty Clinic: Matthew Phillips, M.D.; Walter Randolph, M.D.; Melvin Saludes, M.D

 

• Trinity Sports Medicine: Michael Scarpone, D.O., Medical Director; Aaron Orlosky, D.O.; Justin Baker, DPC; Paula Lucas, P.A.

“As a multidisciplinary team, our sports medicine staff understands that patient engagement, patient satisfaction, and improving patient access is always important,” Michael Scarpone, D.O., Medical Director of the Trinity Health System Sports Medicine Program, said. “Our patients know that we try to provide a one-stop shop model that provides them the best care with the least amount of frustration in going to different places.”

This approach has earned Trinity Health System’s Sports Medicine Program a loyal following. 

“By making ourselves quickly available to our patients, listening to what they are saying, helping them to understand their problem, we’re allowing them to participate in their care and be part of the team,” Dr. Scarpone said. 

“As a group, we are very grateful for our patients and their satisfaction,” Justin Baker, DPC, Doctor of Chiropractic, added. “It’s a testament to our staff and the perseverance that we’ve had through the pandemic and various obstacles over the past few years. We strive to provide excellent care and continue to try our best with not only patient experience, but the improvement of their injuries and conditions.”

Above all, these scores represent what patients are saying about their providers, the staff, and their care, James Mirasola, Vice President of Physician Enterprise, said. “We have a lot of medical professionals who are genuinely devoted and passionate about delivering the very best quality care and patient experience and are loyal to their communities.”

Arbogast agreed. “What I feel is most important here is that the patient experience awards were quantitative vs. nominated. Everyone in the division was being held to the same ranking and outcome measures. Trinity continues to lead the division month after month in our patient experience scores.”

“Our medical group is the front door to our health care delivery system,” Grimshaw said. “The physicians and their staff truly exemplify the very best through commitment to our patients, service to our community, and quality outcomes. We are very excited to celebrate with them and offer recognition that is well-deserved. As this national award program moves into the second year, I am very confident that we will continue to have strong representation from our team in all the categories.”

How do the Physician Enterprise Awards reflect CommonSpirit Health’s vision?

• These awards are anchored on the CommonSpirit Health vision statement. “A healthier future for all – inspired by faith, driven by innovation, and powered by our humanity.”
• They acknowledge contributions of both physicians and advanced practice providers (APPs), with separate award categories for each.
• They acknowledge the contributions of divisions as well as national teams. These awards are an opportunity to not only highlight the work of the divisions, but also highlight how the national teams support the mission.  

“The winners definitely represent all the components of the mission,” Arbogast said. “They are passionate about their role, they work hard to make sure they are bringing the best of the best to the Ohio Valley, and their compassion for their patients is seen daily in everything that they do.”

“We also want to extend our appreciation to everyone who nominated a colleague,” Rachel Maxwell, LPN, Trinity Medical Group Senior Practice Manager, added. “To receive a nomination from a peer is truly one of the highest honors.”

Additional Background: 

• CommonSpirit Health is one of the largest non-profit health systems in the United States, with more than 1,000 care sites in 21 states coast to coast, serving 20 million patients in big and small towns across America. 
• Trinity Health System is a proud member of this system. 
• The Physician Enterprise Awards were set up with equal representation across the system by creating judging panels and champions from each site. 
• A scoring rubric was used. In order to eliminate other influences, bias, or tampering, nominations were anonymous to everyone involved with the voting process until it was completed.  
• Each division of CommonSpirit Health was awarded winners and those winners were then entered into a newly selected national division judging panel.