How INTEGRIS Health built a safer, more aligned caregiver culture with Axios HQ

INTEGRIS Health transformed its frontline safety communications to drive statewide alignment, elevate caregiver voices, and reduce serious safety events.

INTEGRIS Health, Oklahoma’s largest locally owned healthcare organization, operates 20 hospitals and 184 clinics with about 13,000 caregivers spread across markets. Most caregivers are frontline clinicians, not desk-based employees, which made traditional internal comms challenging to scale. 

👉 The challenge: Before Axios HQ, INTEGRIS Health used a combination of mass internal emails sent through Outlook and daily huddles, led by frontline leaders, to share safety updates across its hospitals and clinics. These channels were important for distributing information, but as the system grew, INTEGRIS Health saw an opportunity to improve engagement, consistency, and reach at scale.

INTEGRIS Health focused on strengthening and aligning its communications to: 

• Complement daily huddles: While safety information was shared through emails and daily huddles, INTEGRIS Health wanted a clearer, more consistent way to reinforce key messages in writing so caregivers could easily revisit and reference them over time.
• Reach caregivers more reliably: With most caregivers working on the front lines, INTEGRIS Health needed safety messages that were concise, trusted, and easy to absorb throughout their day, not just in scheduled meetings.
• Turn wins into systemwide standards: Strong safety catches and ideas were emerging in individual hospitals and rural areas, but there was no streamlined way to share those stories quickly across all locations so everyone could learn from them.

🏆 The solution: INTEGRIS Health partnered with Axios HQ to turn Safety Share into a weekly newsletter that helps build and sustain a culture of safety across the organization.

• A consistent weekly rhythm: Safety Share gives caregivers a reliable systemwide safety communication each week, reinforcing what matters most, highlighting stories and keeping safety top of mind across hospitals and clinics.
• Leadership-backed communication: As engagement and readership increased, Safety Share earned strong buy-in from leaders across the system, giving them a trusted, consistent way to reinforce a shared culture of safety.
• Smart Brevity for life-saving communications: INTEGRIS Health uses Smart Brevity and Axios HQ to make technical safety content easy to read and act on. Safety Share stands out in their inbox, and helps ensure critical information is understood quickly.
• Safety stories & shared culture: Each edition highlights a caregiver or team and the action they took to prevent harm, including the problem, the solution, and safety skill they demonstrated. By elevating these stories across the state, Safety Share spreads best practices, recognizes the people doing the work, and reinforces that speaking up for safety is always valued.

🛠️ How it works: With Safety Share, INTEGRIS Health has built a dependable weekly practice that reinforces safety behaviors, elevates caregivers' voices, and spreads learning across the state.

• Leadership partnership: Safety Share is produced in collaboration with the Culture of Safety Steering Committee, including the System Chief Nursing Officer and patient safety leaders. They identify stories that reflect the safety behaviors and focus areas the organization wants to reinforce.
• Consistent format: Each issue has the problem, the solution, and the safety skill demonstrated. INTEGRIS Health pairs the story with a caregiver photo to make the message feel personal and real.
• Daily huddle reinforcement: Daily huddles remain an important part of INTEGRIS Health’s safety communication. Safety Share complements that work by echoing key priorities in writing each week, strengthening retention through repetition.

📊 Key comms and business results: 

• INTEGRIS Health saw a 41% reduction in serious safety events in the past fiscal year.
• 36,000+ ideas implemented in the 2025 fiscal year, with 82% of caregivers implementing one or more ideas — a 17% increase from the fiscal year prior.
• Caregivers cited communication as a core strength on INTEGRIS Health’s 2025 culture survey, and reported a stronger sense that their patient safety input is valued.
• Safety Share also highlighted a caregiver-led safety improvement known as “Ticket to Ride” — helping scale a consistent patient identification practice across the organization — to support INTEGRIS Health’s reduction in safety events. 

💭 Closing thoughts from INTEGRIS Health System Chief Nursing Officer Patricia “Pidge” Lohr: 

•  “We’re using Axios HQ to strengthen our culture of safety at INTEGRIS Health. For us, that means better outcomes for patients, a clear commitment to zero harm, and caregivers who feel protected, supported, and safe while caring for our communities across Oklahoma.
• Much of what we communicate is technical, but it’s also essential and often lifesaving. Axios HQ helps us deliver clear, timely information our caregivers can trust—supporting the daily work they do to keep patients and each other safe."

INTEGRIS Health earned Axios HQ's 2026 Best-in-Class Award for Culture Creator. See our other award winners: