Dear Minot Community and the Region-at-Large:

Welcome to the first in a series of columns designed to share the story of our new healthcare campus and medical district. For Trinity Health, this project represents our once-in-a-generation opportunity to transform the delivery of healthcare in northwest North Dakota just as our founders did over 100 years ago.

Today’s column addresses the founding document that set us on a course for growth and modernization.

In October 2009, The Trinity Health Board of Directors and senior leadership dedicated time to envisioning the future of healthcare in our organization, region, and country. Our goals and ideas for future success became the 2009-2014 strategic plan. The plan reframed Trinity Health as an organization dedicated to meeting the health needs of the Region-at-Large spanning from north central North Dakota to northeastern Montana. It charged the executive team with making sure Trinity Health continued to provide high-quality care and articulated the desire to serve as a regional model for transformative, yet sustainable 21st century healthcare.

The desire to meet this challenge was strong; but the infrastructure was not. Since being built in 1922, the current hospital experienced more than 15 phases of new additions and more than 50 major internal renovations of existing space. This created inefficient layouts for our staff members and restricted the growth and success of future programs.

Despite the hurdles, our executive leadership team embraced the path laid out in the strategic plan. We committed to finding a way to transform Trinity Health from a community hospital in Minot to a medical destination and regional care system ready and able to address complex cases and conditions.

Management used six strategic imperatives as guideposts toward this new vision:

Responsiveness

Integration

High Quality Health Services

Work Life and Life-Long Learning

Academic Healthcare Development

Sustainability

We also wanted to be transparent about our intention to grow and change. To that end, we adopted the slogan, “Reinventing Health” and began using it in our ads and publications. The phrase symbolized a promise to the community that Trinity Health would honor the tradition of rural community-based healthcare while discovering new and innovative ways to achieve better health.

Once work began, it didn’t take long to realize that achieving our goal of becoming a regional care system could not happen without a larger, more specific vision of Trinity Health’s modern campus. More about that in my next column…