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Culture, Community Influences Care at TriStar Southern Hills Medical Center

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Man and two women standing outside building with mural
(L-R) TriStar Southern Hills' Rick Speitel, Director of Respiratory Therapy, Dr. Linda Plummer, Emergency Room Physician, and Kimberly Ward, Physician Relations Director enjoyed a stop at Casa Azafran during the Nashville Diversity bus tour.

The heart of healthcare is about service…service to people. As the leader of HCA Healthcare’s TriStar Southern Hills Medical Center, my priority is to make everyone, especially our patients, feel welcomed, cared for and embraced. That’s why me and 17 of our hospital administrators joined Nashville’s first-ever Workforce Diversity Seminar and bus tour this past October.

TriStar Southern Hills serves a diverse community where 23 percent of the population is Latino, according to the 2010 U.S. Census. As a community-based hospital, we must recognize, understand and appreciate the diversity of our community and make efforts to mirror our population. The daylong diversity event equipped us with the skills to strengthen our cultural awareness, cultivate an inclusive workplace and, for us, ultimately provide a positive patient experience.

At HCA Healthcare, it’s what we call culturally competent care – a patient centered approach that focuses on treating people with kindness and compassion, dignity and respect – the foundation of HCA Healthcare values.

Our community is at the heart of everything we do at TriStar Southern Hills. We have a strong partnership with the Tennessee Latin American Chamber of Commerce and teamed with now Neighborhood Health in 2009 to form the Wallace Road Clinic on our campus. The bilingual emergency room sign also was constructed to create a welcoming health care environment for our community.

In 2016, we plan to follow up the Nashville bus tour with a half-day diversity training for all managers on our campus and hope to expand the training to all of our employees in the near future.

I was proud to be among more than 100 community and business leaders that feel the same way we do and are generating positive change, not only in their businesses, but in their communities, as well.

Visit the Nashville National Organization for Workforce Diversity for more information on the bus tour.

About HCA Healthcare

HCA Healthcare, one of the nation's leading providers of healthcare services, is comprised of 183 hospitals and more than 2,300 sites of care, in 20 states and the United Kingdom. Our more than 283,000 colleagues are connected by a single purpose — to give patients healthier tomorrows.

As an enterprise, we recognize the significant responsibility we have as a leading healthcare provider within each of the communities we serve, as well as the opportunity we have to improve the lives of the patients for whom we are entrusted to care. Through the compassion, knowledge and skill of our caregivers, and our ability to leverage our scale and innovative capabilities, HCA Healthcare is in a unique position to play a leading role in the transformation of care.

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