We are a family.

At GBMC we are a family. All families have good days and bad days; they receive good news and bad news. Since I arrived here in June, I think there has been much more good news than bad news. But last week we had 2 tragic deaths of members of our GBMC family. The first was Patricia Brock-Johnson, a surgical technician in the Women's Surgical Center. Pat's work at GBMC began in 1992 in Labor and Delivery. She later transferred to the Women's Surgical Center. I did not know Pat well, but her colleagues have told me that she was a great member of our clinical team who was very skilled, kind, and who took great pride in her work. The second was Joshua Burger, an OR support assistant in the General Operating Rooms. Josh came to GBMC in 2009 and quickly became a valued member of our surgical staff. I did not know Josh but I have learned that he had many talents and that he was a freelance painter and specialist in exterior restoration. Josh was a dedicated and dependable member of the OR team. I know it was hard for people who knew Pat and Josh to get through work last week. Thank you for supporting each other and for remembering Pat's family and Josh's family in your thoughts and prayers.

Over 2400 members of our family received the annual influenza vaccine last week as part of our annual push to protect ourselves and our patients from this annual scourge. I am grateful for the hard work of all those who pitched in to make the first week of the initiative so successful!

Organizations that want to move forward must set goals for themselves. Our goals are the answer to the question: "How will we know if we are getting closer to our vision of treating everyone, every time, the way we would want our own loved ones treated?" We have now finalized the GBMC Healthcare System Goals for fiscal 2011. The goal's are:

GBMC Healthcare
Annual Goals
FY11
(July 1, 2010 - June 30, 2011)

I will be talking more about our goals as we go forward. We must get better at executing change. One way to do that is to celebrate teams that reach their goals. On Friday, we celebrated both Halloween and those teams that achieved their patient satisfaction goals for the first quarter of this fiscal year.

One of the Teams that reached their patient satisfaction goal for the quarter was the Chemotherapy Infusion Center in our Cancer Center. Treating patients with cancer is not easy. These members of our family are very good at it.