Grady Memorial Hospital thankful for Delaware community

As I enter my sixth month as Chief Oper­at­ing Offi­cer at Grady Memo­r­ial Hos­pi­tal, I would like to give pause on this spe­cial day to thank you for mak­ing me feel at home and, more impor­tantly, for your con­tin­ued sup­port of our hospital.

Since my first day on the job, I have been grat­i­fied by your inter­est in the job we are doing and the ser­vices we pro­vide. Your feed­back to new ini­tia­tives and involve­ment in our pro­grams are vital to the ful­fill­ment of our mis­sion “to improve the health of those we serve.”

I extend my heart­felt thanks to all of our vol­un­teers who so gra­ciously give of them­selves and their time to make our patients and their fam­ily mem­bers feel as com­fort­able as pos­si­ble, often in try­ing circumstances.

Among their many duties, our vol­un­teers dis­pense refresh­ments and snacks to vis­i­tors, work in the gift shop, escort patients and vis­i­tors, act as liaisons for fam­i­lies wait­ing on surgery patients, and serve on a TLC squad that tends to the per­sonal needs of patients

They were espe­cially active this year in help­ing to main­tain our patient flow. They assisted with our way-finding effort (com­pli­cated by remod­el­ing), patiently accom­mo­dated our new greeter pro­gram and con­tin­ued to help take care of our dis­charged patients. Our vol­un­teers are a remark­ably ded­i­cated group who pro­vide an invalu­able ser­vice for our staff. I can’t thank them enough.

I am also espe­cially grate­ful for another group of vol­un­teers: the 13 mem­bers of our Grady Advi­sory Board. These com­mu­nity lead­ers take time from their busy sched­ules to advise us about future devel­op­ment, gauge the com­mu­nity impact of new ini­tia­tives and com­mu­ni­cate with res­i­dents about our pro­grams, ser­vices and changes. The Grady Advi­sory Board ensures com­mu­nity input in our decision-making and we all should be grate­ful for the work they do.

But some­times what has touched me the most dur­ing these past few months has been the rel­a­tively small and “unof­fi­cial” ges­tures of ordi­nary cit­i­zens express­ing their own­er­ship stake in Grady. For instance, area breast can­cer sur­vivors graced our walls in Octo­ber with a col­or­ful dis­play they made of bras to com­mem­o­rate Breast Can­cer Aware­ness Month. It pro­vided a lot of enjoy­ment for our vis­i­tors and served as a thought­ful reminder of an impor­tant cause. The women pur­sued this project with­out any pro­mo­tion from us. I see grass-roots activ­i­ties like this going on all the time.

Of course, I would be remiss if I did not take the time to thank our physi­cians, nurses and asso­ciates for their devo­tion to patients and the com­mu­nity. Many of them live in Delaware County. This is where they work and play, raise their fam­i­lies and send their kids to school. As your neigh­bors and friends, they have your best inter­ests at heart. We all are blessed to have at our dis­posal so many out­stand­ing care­givers with a vari­ety of expe­ri­ences and skills.

And last, but cer­tainly not least, I would like to thank our cor­po­rate par­ent, Ohio­Health, for help­ing us pre­serve the per­sonal nature of our care, while pro­vid­ing access to all of the won­der­ful resources in its vast net­work of hos­pi­tals and other care sites.

Dur­ing the past five years, since our merger with Ohio­Health, we have dou­bled our invest­ment in Grady from $22 mil­lion in the pre­vi­ous five years to $44 mil­lion. This year we are mak­ing $5 mil­lion in improve­ments that include the pri­va­ti­za­tion of 21 rooms, new can­cer care ser­vices at the Delaware Health Cen­ter and a sig­nif­i­cant infor­ma­tion tech­nol­ogy upgrade that will inte­grate our com­puter sys­tem with the Ohio­Health network.

We couldn’t have done any of this with­out your sup­port. Thank you for mak­ing Grady an out­stand­ing health­care cen­ter and keep­ing the “com­mu­nity” in com­mu­nity hospital.

Bob Walsh, RN, is Chief Oper­at­ing Offi­cer at Grady Memo­r­ial Hospital.

Posted by Grady Memorial Hospital on Nov 23 2011. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS Feed. Comments can be made below.