Dear Colleagues,

I hope everyone had a wonderful holiday weekend and was able to spend time with loved ones. Due to the holiday week and many team members taking well-deserved vacation time, this week’s CEO Update will be brief highlighting a few key updates. 

This week, I held a retreat with our senior leadership team as well as the leadership team from UConn Health Waterbury Hospital. It was a wonderful opportunity for our teams to come together, strengthen relationships, share ideas, and engage in meaningful discussions about our exciting future. The retreat fostered collaboration, alignment, and a shared commitment to advancing our mission, positioning us for continued success and growth in the years ahead. 

We covered a lot of ground in our retreats but a core message regarding the UConn Health Community Network was the key priorities over the next 2-3 years.

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I am proud to share that UConn John Dempsey Hospital has once again been recognized by the American Heart Association with its prestigious Get With The Guidelines® Stroke Gold Plus Quality Achievement Award. This recognition marks our 10th consecutive year earning the Gold Plus designation, a remarkable milestone that reflects our commitment to providing timely, evidence-based stroke care and achieving the best possible outcomes for our patients. This accomplishment is a testament to the exceptional talent, dedication, and teamwork of our physicians, nurses, advanced practice providers, rehabilitation specialists, and support staff who work together every day to deliver life-saving care.

In addition to the Gold Plus award, our hospital also received the Stroke Honor Roll Elite and Type 2 Diabetes Honor Roll recognitions, highlighting our ability to rapidly treat eligible stroke patients and provide the highest standard of care for individuals with complex health needs. Stroke remains a leading cause of death and long-term disability in the United States, making rapid diagnosis and treatment critical. These honors underscore UConn Health’s role as a trusted leader in stroke and cardiovascular care and reinforce our commitment to serving the people of Connecticut with excellence, compassion, and innovation. Congratulations and thank you to everyone whose efforts made this achievement possible.

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As we end the week, I’d like to share this patient letter:

I wanted to send you a quick note to let you know that my mother was an inpatient at UConn this past week following an acute illness. From the Emergency Department through her stay on the third floor, your team was phenomenal. 

My mother has dementia, and every nurse and nursing assistant she encountered treated her with remarkable kindness, patience, and dignity. I’d especially like to recognize Jaime, the nursing assistant who stayed with my mom for nearly 12 hours, keeping her engaged, comforted, and happy. That level of compassion he offered made an immeasurable difference to our family.

I’d also like to acknowledge her nurses on the 3^rd floor of the tower—Ediyta, Dan, Rachel, and especially Callie Corbett, who was nothing short of a godsend. Callie balanced firm direction with kindness, humor, and genuine compassion. She exemplifies the very best of nursing and left a lasting impression on all of us.

As with any hospitalization, there were the usual challenges with medical coordination and discharge planning, and it was an exhausting week for our family. But throughout it all, your staff consistently embodied a patient-centered, loving approach that brought comfort to a very weary patient and family. Please extend my sincere gratitude to everyone who cared for my mother. Their professionalism and humanity were extraordinary, and I hope they know how much they meant to us.

Thank you all for your outstanding care!

Andrew C. Agwunobi, MD, MBA
Chief Executive Officer
EVP for Health Affairs
UConn Health

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Dear Dr. Andy

After finishing my annual SABA Compliance training I was thinking about why doesn’t UConn Health have a master license for a password manager that all us employees can load onto our phones to use to help make our systems more secure? I use one for home use, and it comes with an extension for every type of web browser. We have the Duo Mobile for when I have to remote into my desktop or log in with my NetID to make sure I am who I say I am. It would be nice if it had some sort of password function, to create and store very complex passwords to prevent any sort of hacking.

We do appreciate it’s a challenge having so many systems/passwords. As our CIO Rick McCarthy reports, our information technology and cybersecurity teams have actively researched several leading commercial solutions and fully recognize their clear security benefits; Rick’s group has worked to reduce the number of passwords by integrating systems into our Active Directory authentication (e.g. computer login and Epic have the same password). However, rolling out an enterprise password manager at this scale has proven challenging for reasons related to cost, training and support, technical capability, and HIPAA compliance.

So the bottom line is, we’re not there yet.Rest assured, strengthening authentication and reducing password-related risks remains a high priority. We continue to actively monitor the market for solutions that better balance security, usability, cost, and supportability.

Thank you for your patience and understanding, and thank you for raising this.

Have something you want to ask Dr. Andy? Submit your question on The Hub.

Hub Highlights

UConn Health John Dempsey Hospital received the American Heart Association’s Get With The Guidelines® Stroke Gold Plus for 10th Consecutive Year.