HJBR Mar/Apr 2022

DIALOGUE 14 MAR / APR 2022 I  HEALTHCARE JOURNAL OF BATON ROUGE   years, and we need to start to systematically work on improving mental health resources, improving and helping people understand there should not be a stigma with mental health issues. All of us go through tough times in our lives. Many of us go through very, very challenging times when having access to mental health services or a coun- selor or therapist can be extremely helpful, and that’s not a sign of weakness, it’s not a sign of a problem with you, it’s a sign that people need help just like when they get the flu or they get COVID or they get can- cer. Mental health issues are another medi- cal condition that folks need help with, so I think that we need to change the view of mental health and also raise the importance of mental health and the investment in men- tal health resources. Editor You speak of “drivers of the healthcare status of our popula- tion” in referring to Louisiana’s dismal healthcare rankings. After studying and developing the 10-year plan to improve our rankings, has anything surprised you? Thomas I think health rankings are driven by a lot of social factors, not just healthcare factors. Some of those factors are certainly dia- betes, hypertension control, mor- tality from cancer, cancer screening rates, and those types of things. That’s part of the health rankings. But other components of health rankings are also access to health insurance, the level of poverty in the state, the graduation rate from high school in the state. So, there are a lot of other com- ponents of the health rankings that are not really directly related to healthcare but are related to the social issues that our state faces, which is why, if we want to move the health rankings, Ochsner isn’t going to be able to do this on its own. We need to be a catalyst and bring people together, so it’s going to take us all pulling in the same direction. I mentioned things like smoking. I men- tioned things like being able to manage chronic disease, better access to health- care and mental health services. All of those are important things, but we have to go upstream to the underlying issues around poverty, education and creating workforce and job opportunities for our population, which will help us move out of this nega- tive health status position over time. And, it’s going to take time. There’s a reason that this is a 10-year goal, not a one-year goal. It’s not going to happen overnight, and it’s going to really require all of us to continue to pull in the same direction together. Once again, Ochsner is really just trying to be a convener. We can’t drive this on our own. We want to start to bringing folks together and create a common plan that we can address together. Editor I’m not sure if the majority of our readers are aware of this, but your hos- pital system has been on the forefront of updating the media through Zoom calls giving us often a weekly blow-by-blow of the status of Ochsner’s COVID-19 status. You’ve also patiently answered all ques- tions thrown out to you. This has lifted the veil of some of the inner workings of your facilities, and it’s turned you and Dr. Hart and many others into somewhat of media darlings. How was that decision made to be so upfront and available to the media, what did you learn from the experience, and how do you feel it’s benefited the community and your facilities? Thomas First of all, I don’t know about being a media darling. But, I would say our focus was really to try to be a source of truth and to make sure people understood the facts about what was happening around the full COVID crisis. We found that there was a lot of misinformation in the media. We found that there was a lot of misunderstanding from the communities and from the pub- lic and what they were seeing on social media and other sources. We really felt like we needed to be a source of truth, a source of clar- ity, a source of trying to simplify the message and put it in terms that people can understand what’s happening, and also be a source of warning to people about things they should or shouldn’t do around things like masking, vaccines, and those types of situations. We really did it to try to be a good public ser- vant and to provide as much infor- mation and clarity as we could to the media, so they could get the right information out there. And, hopefully, it was somewhat help- ful as we’ve gone through this process. We realize that transparency is impor- tant in everything we do, and we want to continue to have a good relationship with the media, to be a source of information and knowledge to the media, because there are so many questions today about what we’re all going through. There’s so much mis- information and things that are not true in the media and social media that we’re trying to correct and ensure that the right “We realize that transparency is important in everything we do, and we want to continue to have a good relationship with the media, to be a source of information and knowledge to the media, because there are so many questions today about what we’re all going through. There’s so much misinformation and things that are not true in the media and social media that we’re trying to correct and ensure that the right information gets shared through the right channels.”