Running an organization the size of St. Tammany Health System is like running a small city, and every good city needs a newspaper to keep its citizenry informed.
In 1961, that philosophy led to the founding of The Sick Call, the first regular newsletter – but by no means the last one – produced specifically for St. Tammany Parish Hospital employees.
It gets the spotlight in this week’s instalment of our ongoing “70 for 70” series.
Installment No. 7: Read all about it!
Today’s artifact: Vol. 1, Issue 1 of The Sick Call, a typewritten employee newsletter that began publishing in 1961. It was the first of what would be a string of newsletters distributed to the employee population at St. Tammany Health System.
Why it is significant: From the beginning, the lifeblood of St. Tammany Health System has been its workforce. Keeping them informed of – and involved in – hospital operations has always been a priority.
In the early days, keeping them in the loop was easy. The hospital had just 18 employees upon opening.
But by 1961, the hospital had already undergone its first expansion and was in growth mode. With the purchase of a fancy new mimeograph machine, hospital Administrator Wilbert Breaux named Assistant Administrator Gwen Gitz the editor of the hospital’s first organization-wide newsletter.
That first issue of The Sick Call – a four-page publication featuring a hand-drawn masthead and a cartoonish front-page illustration – wasn’t exactly scintillating stuff. (Unless your idea of scintillating is news of a paint job for the hospital lobby or word that an ailing colleague was recovering from surgery.)
It was the start of something, though.
By 1977, The Sick Call had been replaced by The Scanner, a professionally printed bimonthly newsletter that continued for more than a decade under the leadership of longtime hospital Administrator Haller Alexius.
Just like the health system, the newsletter continued to evolve in the 1990s, being rebranded House Notes.
Around the turn of the new millennium, it had become The CARES Connection, an acronymic allusion to the health system’s customer service standards. That iteration ran from 2002 to 2018.
Today, with more than 2,800 colleagues, St. Tammany Health System has gone digital with the 2019 introduction of an app called Lifeline. In addition to providing colleagues with the latest STHS headlines, from weekly menus to colleague awards and feature stories, it provides them with a social-media-like space in which to interact.
In the process, and just like its printed predecessors, it ensures colleagues are informed, in the loop and at the center of everything the health system does – just as they have been since Day 1.
Do you have a St. Tammany Parish Hospital story to share? We’d love to hear it! Email us at CommDept@stph.org.
Next week – Installment No. 8: The evolution of an OR
Last week – Installment No. 6: The scrapbooking historian