Company: HCA Houston Healthcare
Diversity Team Name: Diversity, Equity & Inclusion Council
Diversity Team Leader(s): Sherri Neal, Chief Diversity Officer
Website: www.hcahoustonhealthcare.com
What Makes this Diversity Team Stand Out
HCA Houston Healthcare is the leading provider of health care in the Greater Houston area, where excellent trained physicians, nurses and allied health professionals treat almost a million patients every year and provide over $2 billion in charity care annually. Our comprehensive network includes 13 hospitals, 10 outpatient surgery centers, 11 freestanding emergency centers and a dozen freestanding diagnostic imaging facilities.
We consider it our privilege to serve a diverse patient population and employ a diverse workforce of 15,000 colleagues. We have intentionally renewed and expanded our focus on diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) through a comprehensive approach focused on six key areas: patients, colleagues, suppliers, boards, community partnerships, and sustainability. Each of these six areas is critical and interconnected with the others, reflecting a holistic approach aligned with our organizational goals.
Through this commitment, HCA Houston Healthcare is advancing health equity and ensuring access to services for all patients, providing an inclusive culture where colleagues can thrive, promoting the inclusion of diverse businesses within our supplier base, ensuring our boards of trustees reflect the diversity of the communities we serve, and building healthier communities through strategic partnerships and environmental stewardship.
HCA Houston Healthcare’s DEI achievements have included the following:
- Recognized as an Outstanding Diverse Organization by Houston Business Journal.
- Launched eight employee colleague networks (Women’s, Hispanic/Latinx, Young Professionals, Veteran, The Voice Black Colleague Network, Asian, LGBTQ, and Health and Wellness).These employee- led groups work to strengthen our DEI culture by facilitating connection, collaboration, and celebration among colleagues. The networks allow employees to share ideas, build relationships, and unlock possibilities for career development, mentorship, and community engagement.
- Relaunched our Diversity Council with a focus on goals related to patient care and health equity, colleague inclusion, belonging, representation and advancement, supplier diversity, board representation, and community engagement, with representation from all hospitals and a variety of functional areas, tenure, and leadership levels across diversity dimensions.
- Created goals for reducing turnover among our colleagues of color, increasing employee engagement for colleagues of color, and increasing representation of women and people of color among leadership and board representation.
- Hosted Conscious Inclusion Training for all senior leaders and above, with a goal of providing training for all directors and above during 2021.
- Launching a formal mentorship program in 2021.
- Performed outreach in underserved communities of color, with a focus on school districts and mentorship programs at local historically black colleges and universities—including Prairie View University and Texas Southern University—to boost access to care and career development opportunities.
- Colleague volunteer activity and donations supported more than 220 charitable organizations.
- More than $10 million dollars in Minority and Women Owned Business Enterprise (MWBE) spend during 2020.
At HCA Houston Healthcare, above all else, we are committed to the care and improvement of human life. Our commitment to cultivating a diverse and inclusive company is not passive; it is active. We are more dedicated than ever to fostering an engaged, equitable, and inclusive culture for our patients, our colleagues, and our communities.
