A message from Alan B. Miller
Founder, Chairman and CEO

It is time to adjust the sails.

Alan B. MillerMay, 2020 — Over the past couple of months, we have lived and worked through one of the most stressful times in the history of healthcare. Yet, we have continued to deliver superior care to high-risk patients and vulnerable populations, while working to keep our communities safe. It reminds me of the John Maxwell quote, “The pessimist complains about the wind. The optimist expects it to change. The leader adjusts the sails.” As leaders in healthcare, we must adjust our sails adeptly.

At UHS, we put patients first, delivering consistent and superior quality patient care across all access points, service lines and programs. Our care teams on the front lines demonstrate their unending resilience and commitment — they are true Healthcare Heroes, brave and dedicated to serving patients.

As leaders in healthcare, we must adjust our sails adeptly.

At the start of the COVID-19 crisis, we activated UHS Incident Command quickly to direct the clinical guidance, protocols, operational adjustments, supply chain and human resources needs and communications necessary to equip our facilities to meet the evolving needs as the pandemic expanded across the U.S.

Every UHS team member — whether they are working at one of our Hospitals or working from our Corporate Office supporting our facilities — realizes and appreciates his/her role in providing, supporting or enabling patient care. This era is unprecedented, and I am proud to say, our healthcare team has been exceptional.

We have scaled and greatly expanded our telehealth engagements month over month, and expect the trend to continue.

Clinicians at our Hospitals are engaged in leading-edge medical discoveries and advances. We announced the first-in-nation use of Virtual Reality at The George Washington University Hospital to visualize the effects of COVID-19. Clinicians and Physicians at Manatee Memorial Hospital in Florida, at Northwest Texas Health System in Amarillo, and at South Texas Health System in the Rio Grande Valley are participating in clinical trials studying the prospects of using convalescent plasma as a treatment. Working with MIT, UHS innovators participated in the MIT COVID-19 Challenge, a hackathon to develop new, innovative healthcare solutions to address the pandemic.

Even in these challenging times, we are asking ourselves, ‘How do we get ready for a post-COVID world?’ No one knows exactly what that world will look like, but we will certainly play a key role in determining what healthcare will be. We adjusted the sails early on in this pandemic. We will keep adjusting to harness the winds, care for our patients and serve our communities.

#ThisIsUHS

Alan B. Miller
Founder, Chairman & CEO, Universal Health Services, Inc.