Message from the President

What Ida wanted most was to be able to care for her family. She was only 45 years old and suffered from hypertension, diabetes, coronary artery disease, and congestive heart failure. Her diseases were taking a toll.

Ultimately, she needed to have open heart surgery. Although the surgery was successful, Ida was still struggling. In just about a year’s time, she had made nine trips to the emergency room and was hospitalized three times. 

The future looked rather bleak.

Luckily for Ida, dedicated care managers from Area Agency on Aging, InterCare, and Lakeland Health had recently created the Interagency Care Team (ICT) to collaborate on health initiatives and research in order to give help and hope to people in these types of situations.

In order to better understand her needs, the ICT staff visited Ida in her home, determined to do everything they could to improve her condition. They discovered she needed help getting her medications and understanding why each one was important. They also discovered she needed help learning how and when to check her blood sugar, and under what circumstances she needed to call or visit her physicians.

With a few visits, and a little education, Ida was in a much better position to know when to help herself and when she needed the help of others. Over the next 18 months Ida didn’t make a single trip to the emergency department or require a single hospitalization.

I like this story for a lot of reasons.

First, it is an outstanding example of how we can make a huge impact by simply working together. In this example, three different organizations came together accomplish something more impactful than any of them could do alone. By leveraging their collective resources and coordinating efforts, the organizations accomplished things which would otherwise be impossible. 

Second, our collaborative efforts accomplished three goals, all at the same time—better health, better health care, at a lower cost.

Do those three goals sound a bit familiar? They should. Together, they make up the “Triple Aim.” This story is an example of a “triple aim, triple play” where we were able to accomplish all three goals simultaneously.

Third, and most importantly, we improved the life of a community member who needed our assistance. We helped her to do what mattered most to her. We made it possible for her to take better care of herself and her family.

This is just one story, but it certainly is not the only example of how Lakeland is collaborating across our region to improve the lives of our friends and neighbors. Triple Aim is the right thing to do and we can do it better if we all work together.