California Office of Statewide Health Planning & Development

OSHPD Mission & Values

OSHPD's mission and values are the foundation of how we do business. They guide us in our decision-making, prioritizing, and interactions with clients and fellow workers.

Mission:

The Mission of Office of Statewide Health Planning and Development (OSHPD) is to promote healthcare accessibility through leadership in analyzing California's healthcare infrastructure, promoting a diverse and competent healthcare workforce, providing information about healthcare outcomes, assuring the safety of buildings used in providing healthcare, insuring loans to encourage the development of healthcare facilities, and facilitating development of sustained capacity for communities to address local healthcare issues.

Values:

• Accountability - Willingness to accept responsibility for ones actions
• Service - A contribution to the welfare of others
• Communication - The sharing of information
• Innovation - A new idea, method or device
• Integrity - To adhere firmly to a code of moral values
• Professionalism - Aspiring qualities that mark a profession or agency
• Respect - To consider worthy of high regard
• Teamwork - Each doing a part for the whole good

Accountability

As a government agency, we are held accountable for our actions. In fact, this accountability is one of the prime factors that separates governmental from private sector organizations. At OSHPD we are accountable to the people of California, as well as to their representatives, including our Administration and members of the Legislature. We are also accountable to those who depend on our services, such as healthcare facilities and health professionals to name two examples. This accountability generates certain expectations for our actions.

Service

OSHPD is essentially a service organization, providing services for our clients. These services include the efficient processing of approvals for health facility construction in our Facilities Development Division (FDD) Division and the collection and dissemination of information from health care providers along with many others. We are recognized for the quality and consistency of the services that we provide. Maintaining and even improving upon this level of achievement is a demanding but achievable goal.

Communication

Communication means that it is important for the Office to effectively and reliably transmit information both internally and externally. It also emphasizes that at OSHPD, communication is "two-way" in nature. OSHPD is a national leader in communication as portrayed by our commitment to making healthcare information available to the public. An example of this is found in our hospital financial and utilization reports that are considered to be confidential in many states.

Innovation

Innovation typifies what we do at OSHPD. For example, our Cal-Mortgage Program and the Health Professions Education Foundation are healthcare accessibility extenders that are unique in state government. Our Facilities Development Division is known throughout the world for its cutting edge work on health facility structural and functional safety. Although we aren't the only state department in the nation that collects or analyzes health data, many consider our Healthcare Information and our Healthcare Quality and Analysis divisions to be the best at what they do. Our Healthcare Workforce and Community Development Division has also garnered repeated accolades for performing work that cannot be done by other states.

Integrity

This is a very important value for a governmental organization. The dictionary includes the definition: firm adherence to a code of especially moral or artistic values, i.e. incorruptibility. At OSHPD, with regard to both our internal operations and external relationships, Integrity also means that we can be counted on to always perform in a consistent and fair manner.

Professionalism

Professionalism means high standards, self-accountability, and responsibility. Other identified characteristics of professionalism include the need to maintain an on-going educational process, dedication, and awareness of professional norms in order to achieve a consistency of performance. Put another way, OSHPD professionals can be relied upon to always perform in a uniformly excellent manner by continually improving their capabilities and competencies.

Respect

Respect is a value that OSHPD staff use to guide their work on a daily basis. Respect has meaning for both internal and external relationships with our constituents. Each operating unit has a set of clients who utilize our services. Despite the enormous volume of interactions, OSHPD has rarely (indeed almost never) received complaints about the way the office treats its clients.

Teamwork

OSHPD works as a team of many teams. A team-based approach allows us to synergistically apply our various strengths and technical competencies. An illustration of this comes from our Facilities Development Division where a team comprised of structural engineers, electrical engineers, mechanical engineers, fire-life safety officers, architects, compliance officers, and others must work together at multiple points in time to review and approve new construction for California's hospitals and skilled nursing facilities. Another example is our Health Information Resource Center where a group of staff works together to respond creatively to requests for information or data.