You know NMC as one of the “Top 100 Rural & Community Hospitals” nationally (as recognized by the National Rural Health Association) and likely know of our long history as a trusted partner in the health, wellness, and social fabric of northwestern Vermont. As a community hospital, our future is inextricably linked to our community’s future – to your future. We are starting to think of that as {Y}our Tomorrow.

As I’ve touched on before, this is a transformational time in healthcare. From the way services are being delivered and paid for, to the very definition of what healthcare includes – change and innovation are occurring rapidly. The underlying drivers are, of course, to enhance quality and access to care, while lowering overall costs, with the result being the improved health and wellbeing for all.

We’ve made great strides towards attaining this balance and there is more to be done. Much more. Leveraging the lifestyle and societal changes needed to continue improving our individual health and the health of our communities takes more than the efforts of our medical center. It requires partnership, both traditional and new. We must work with our patients, their families, and other healthcare providers. With regulators, appointed officials, and elected leaders. With municipalities, businesses, schools and organizations. Through such partnerships, we can ensure the right care can be provided locally at the right time and at a lower price, while maintaining a focus on prevention. We can all work together toward the greater good – in this case, improving the future health and wellbeing of our community.

Three key elements of partnership are transparency, commitment, and communication. Transparency ensures that partners are informed, heard and understood, so that they can meaningfully and effectively participate. Commitment ensures that partners pledge to achieve the ultimate goal and cooperatively work towards it. Communication ensures partners can work well together toward a common goal.

To that end, we’ve launched a new {Y}our Tomorrow section of our website to exchange information and celebrate our and your commitment to a healthier future (tomorrow.northwesternmedicalcenter.org/). We will share information about what we are doing to improve our collective future. Even more, we want you to share your questions and stories. We welcome questions – tough ones included. We will do our best to answer, as we want you to know us: our strengths, opportunities for improvement, current efforts, and future goals. For stories, we want to hear about what you see as important to our community’s future and we want to help celebrate what you and others are doing to help make it better.

With your participation and partnership, we will build a {Y}our Tomorrow” that we can all share in that is healthy and sustainable. I look forward to greater transparency and communication with this new tool. That’s part of our ongoing commitment to you as your trusted healthcare partner.

— Jill Berry Bowen, NMC’s Chief Executive Officer