Dr. Sheng Liu, Chief Clinical Officer of Third Street Family Health Services, has been recognized as the Most Dynamic Chief Clinical Officer of 2024. This recognition honors medical professionals in prominent executive positions, paving the path for better health through their work, leadership qualities, and accomplishments inside and outside their organizations.
Dr. Liu has been instrumental in offering high-quality and comprehensive care at Third Street Family Health Services. She is an accomplished family physician with a history of working in hospital-based practices, community health centers, and the non-profit organization management industry.
“Among Dr. Liu’s many accomplishments, her greatest achievement is that the American Health Council Physician Board proudly recognizes her laudable service to her community and her talent as an educator and physician.”
She has worked tirelessly in both academic medical centers and community health center settings. Her initial two decades of medical career were with a medical center, where she took care of patients of all ages in both outpatient and inpatient settings, delivered babies, trained residents and students, and medically led a large satellite clinic.
Dr. Liu worked in parallel with a federally recognized health facility for the last five of these nineteen years, acting as its Chief Clinical Leader. These five years have given her substantial exposure to the healthcare safety network, namely the Federally Qualified Health Center. Following this 5-year journey, Dr. Liu has served as the top clinical leader for two other FQHCs, including her current role at Third Street Family Health Services as the Chief Clinical Officer.
Dr. Liu’s Inspiring Journey at Third Street Family Health Services
Established in 1993, Third Street Family Health Services strives to deliver comprehensive health and wellness care accessible to all in the communities. Its vision is to inspire healthier communities by eliminating barriers to wellness.
The organization has a solid presence in the four countries in the state of Ohio—Richland, Ashland, Crawford, and Marion—serving rural or semirural populations. Their communities have a high Health Professional Shortage Area (HPSA) score. The health practices here thrive on high quality and low cost.
Third Street Family Health Services’ mission and vision perfectly resonate with Dr. Liu’s inspiration behind entering the medical field. Hence, she joined the organization in 2021 when her family needed to live close to Cleveland.
The senior leaders at Third Street Family Health Services are open and share the same passion and values as Dr. Liu. The organization has Epic as its Electronic Medical Record (EMR) system, which Dr. Liu is well versed in. Epic promotes work effectiveness and enables Dr. Liu to devote her energy to meaningful projects for her patients.
Dr. Liu’s Leadership Principles
Dr. Liu has a distinctive leadership approach where she leads by example and believes in inspiring and empowering her team. Following a servant leadership style, she always guides her patients to achieve their optimal health outcomes and supports her colleagues to reach their full potential.
Fostering a Culture of Excellence and Growth
Dr. Liu is renowned for her unique leadership approach; she sets clear goals and expectations through deliberate actions and leads efforts to achieve better communication, consistency, and shared values. She implements data to drive the efforts. Dr. Liu believes in creating positive outcomes to ensure continuous improvement. She also celebrates small successes and recognizes achievements to encourage her team and keep them motivated.
She believes in bringing change through education, understanding, and vision alignment to facilitate changes. She takes input from each team member and incorporates their ideas, suggestions, and expertise into her final plan.
Establishing Effective Communication and Collaboration
As a key executive, Dr. Liu has always prioritized building strong connections among departments. Some of her key strategies include:
- Putting aside small ambitions
- Promoting the healthy growth of others
- embracing different viewpoints
- Frequent check-ins to improve the cohesiveness of the multiple teams
- Regularly assess how well the various teams are working together
- Integrating technology to facilitate real-time communication
- Checking the effectiveness and rectifying as required
- Addressing communication through different venues and approaches
- Reach out to people often to learn about team dynamics
A Distinctive Approach to Removing Barriers to Wellness
The Third Street Family Health Services performs a need assessment every 3 years and sets strategic plans based on community needs assessments. They serve in multiple locations in their serviced communities. The organization also created several mobile clinics and telehealth services for locations that are inaccessible to conventional healthcare settings. They collaborate with community partners to ensure seamless care transitions, refer patients, and take referrals. Additionally, they arrange care coordination and navigation and promote the efforts of the community partners.
The Future Trends
The emerging trends have served as critical sources of healthcare for low-income, minority, rural, and other medically underserved populations. The increasing cost will drive the employment of technology, health information interoperability, remote monitoring devices, medical-grade sensors, and health apps, combined with in-person care, to achieve a holistic health experience. The demand for instantaneous reward provides a plain field for point-of-care testing and real-time decision support. Health centers and nonprofit healthcare organizations may be in a better position to adopt technological advancements that provide more flexible and affordable solutions. A unique service model may be created given the adaptability that comes from smaller sizes and flexible structures.
Serving Underserved Communities
Dr. Liu strives to deliver complete healthcare support to underserved communities. She harnesses the latest technologies and data to improve the sophistication of the telemedicine experience. She creates a point of care for decisions within the visits and also co-locates vital service lines to meet underserved communities’ medical, dental, mental, and pharmacy needs.
Notable Initiatives and Programs
Third Street Family Health Services has recently purchased a mobile van to establish a new way of healthcare delivery. The organizations merged with a community mental health organization to improve mental health penetration. Dr. Liu and her team are actively working to co-locate mental health providers to join medical teams in the Ashland and Shelby locations.
Words of Wisdom to the Aspiring Healthcare Leaders
Sharing her piece of advice with the leaders, Dr. Liu said that artificial intelligence and digital patient monitoring are the future. Wearable devices like continuous glucose monitoring and AI-enhancing diagnostic tools like IDx-DR for retinal image analysis play a crucial role in healthcare office settings. A health center has great flexibility, feasibility, and adaptability.