TidalHealth outlines aggressive residency expansion, Epic rollout and behavioral-health partnerships

TidalHealth executives used the delegation meeting to outline a major workforce and clinical strategy for Delmarva.

Steve Leonard said the system will put a single Epic electronic health record in place across Delmarva on March 1 to improve information-sharing across hospitals and clinics. "March 1, Epic goes live ... all of Delmarva will be on Epic at that point in time," Leonard said.

Leonard described an ambitious graduate medical education program at Title Health that is independently accredited by the ACGME and is expanding toward roughly 25 approved programs. The system expects to matriculate about 220 residents and fellows when the programs are fully implemented and to graduate roughly 74 fully trained physicians per year across specialties including psychiatry, anesthesiology and oncology. "If you train them and they stay local, you will keep them," Leonard said, arguing GME is key to rural recruitment and retention.

Behavioral health was a second focus. Leonard said TidalHealth has added psychiatric education programs and built capacity for child and adolescent services, but workforce remains the principal constraint. He discussed potential cooperation with Shore Regional Health to share inpatient beds and to expand outpatient services regionally, noting the system has ramped up clinician recruitment and new clinical programs to support community needs.

In Q&A, Leonard said payer and Medicaid administrative practices complicate hospital finances: some Medicaid administrators maintain denial lists for certain ED presentations that result in hospitals treating patients under EMTALA and later facing payment disputes. He urged better coordination among payers, regulators and hospital systems to manage population health in the AHEAD-model environment.

What happens next: TidalHealth will continue its GME roll-out and work with partners on behavioral-health capacity and payer engagement; delegation members praised the workforce strategy and sought updates on inpatient adolescent capacity and partnerships.