GBMC Has The Best Nurses

National Nurses Week is celebrated annually from May 6 (also known as National Nurses Day) through May 12, the birthday of Florence Nightingale, the founder of modern nursing. We are very fortunate in the GBMC HealthCare System to have the best nurses anywhere.

I see evidence of this daily on LDM rounds. Our nurses are not only working hard to bring the best caring and evidence-based practice to every patient, every time, they are also studying our processes and testing changes to make them even better. They display exemplary leadership every day.

Nursing requires selflessness and commitment. The 1,200+ nurses across the GBMC HealthCare System are critical to attaining our vision. Dedication to helping others is a defining characteristic of a nurse.

Nursing has always been a marvelous profession and it is exciting to see how many young nurses we have attracted. We have been able to recruit new nurses and keep our experienced nurses due to the vision of Dr. JoAnn Ioannou, our Senior Vice President of Patient Care Services and Chief Nursing Officer. JoAnn and her nursing leadership team have created a professional development model for nurses that helps them choose their career direction and grow and develop their skills.

We are blessed to have phenomenal nurses in our inpatient units, our operating suites, our outpatient areas, our physician practices, and in our hospice. Our nurses move us closer to our vision every day.

We will be celebrating The Art of Nursing this Friday night and I look forward to seeing many of our nurses at the event. I am very proud of all of them and honored to call them my colleagues!

How has a nurse touched your life, either professionally or personally? Share your comments here and show our nurses just how important they are to GBMC and to our patients.

Accolades from Baltimore magazine for GBMC’s Top Nurses! 
I am proud to acknowledge our six colleagues who were chosen by their peers from among thousands of nurses throughout the Baltimore region. These outstanding nurses were selected in five different specialties and represented 12% of all the winners! Another fact to support my belief that we have the best nurses!

Please join me in congratulating those recognized in Baltimore magazine’s “Excellence in Nursing”

issue:

Greater Baltimore Medical Center

Lisa Groff Paris, DNP, RN – Women’s Health
Deborah Higgins, MS, RN – Educator
JoAnn Ioannou, DNP, MBA, RN, NEA-BC – Management, Nurse Executives
Alexis Schultz, BSN, RN – Pediatrics: Neonatal

Gilchrist 
Karen Bartosz, MSN, RN, CHPN – Hospice/Home Health/Palliative Care
Renee Ennis, BSN, RN, -- Hospice/Home Health/Palliative Care

Once again, congratulations and thank you for your hard work and dedication!

The “Excellence in Nursing” issue is already on newsstands. Please make sure you grab your copy!

Speaking of Baltimore magazine: Physicians, it's that time again! Baltimore magazine is collecting votes for its Top Doctors issue. Doctors, please complete the survey below to vote for the colleagues you respect most! The magazine will only accept online voting for this issue.  Visit http://www.baltimoremagazine.com/about/top-doctors-survey to cast your vote today!

National Hospital Week:  Time to Celebrate Those Who Care for Others 
We are also celebrating National Hospital Week from May 6 through May 12. According to the American Hospital Association, the week is “a celebration of the history, technology, and dedicated professionals that make our facilities beacons of confidence and care.”  This year’s theme is “Caring Is Our Calling,” something that our committed GBMC, Gilchrist, and GBMC Health Partners staff – more than 4,0000 employees across the system – do daily.

We have excellent facilities and technology within GBMC HealthCare, but a hospital is always more than a building and equipment. What makes our medical center great is our people. Physicians, nurses, technicians, therapists, other clinicians, environmental services workers, administrators, transporters, food service workers, supply technicians, librarians, volunteers, groundskeepers, fundraisers, human resource experts, telephone operators, information technologists, maintenance and facilities workers, and everyone else. At all hours of the day and night, all year long, GBMC and its dedicated staff are here to serve our community in our mission of health, healing, and hope.

I am very grateful for all that our hospital team does every day. Thank you to all!

The Passing of Baltimore County Executive Kevin Kamenetz
Today, we are all sad to hear of the passing of Baltimore County Executive Kevin Kamenetz. The County Executive was a friend to GBMC HealthCare and our mission and a true advocate for our vision. He was a public servant who worked tirelessly for our community. Our thoughts and prayers are with his wife and children.

Stepping it up to Reduce the Tragedy of the Opioid Epidemic

Baltimore City Mayor Catherine Pugh and Baltimore City Health Commissioner Dr. Leana Wen, along with representatives of all 11 Baltimore City hospitals, announced a new initiative this week to respond to the opioid epidemic.

The program will be built on levels of care that come from evidence-based techniques to identify and treat addiction when patients arrive in the emergency department or are admitted to the hospital. The plan is based on a similar initiative in Rhode Island, where overdose deaths decreased after its implementation. You may learn about the levels of care and what is required at each level here: https://health.baltimorecity.gov/levels-care

GBMC is not formally participating in this program since our hospital is in Baltimore County, not in the city, but we are already doing much of what is required to be in the highest level of care and we will continue to build to this capability. In our ED, we have peer counselors available and we begin addiction treatment for those who are willing. GBMC has also started working to prevent addiction or treat it in its earliest stages by having behavioral health consultants, substance use consultants, and psychiatrists in our patient-centered medical homes. Our goal is to identify depression and other mental illness early in the disease progression, so we can treat the disease early and hopefully prevent substance use.

I am delighted to see the work that is being done to stop this horrible epidemic. We will continue to partner with the community to bring this scourge to an end.

Hand Hygiene
It’s no secret that cleaning your hands can prevent the spread of germs, including those that are resistant to antibiotics and are more difficult to treat. Practicing hand hygiene is a simple, yet effective way to prevent infections

This Saturday, May 5 is “World Hand Hygiene Day.”  The day has been designated to remind healthcare workers and to encourage patients and their families to practice good hand hygiene. Many patients in the U.S. are affected by healthcare-associated infections and many of these situations could have been prevented by caregivers properly cleaning their hands at key moments in patient care.

Thank you very much to all of you for washing your hands!

GBMC Represented Again In The Daily Record’s Top 100 Women
I am once again proud to announce that two of our esteemed colleagues in the GBMC family were honored by The Daily Record as Top 100 Women. Barbara P. Messing, MA, CCC-SLP, BCS-S, Administrative-Clinical Director of the Milton J. Dance, Jr. Head and Neck Center, Johns Hopkins Head & Neck Surgery and Johns Hopkins Voice Center at GBMC, and Cathy Hamel, President of Gilchrist and our system’s Vice President for Continuing Care, (pictured left to right) were both honored for being exemplary citizens, for exhibiting a commitment to their community, and for actively participating in future leader mentoring. Congrats to you both!

Remembering Joe Keelty and Celebrating Our Donors

This week, we had our annual Keelty Society dinner at Hayfields Country Club. The Society recognizes lifetime financial giving to GBMC of $250,000 or greater. This year, we welcomed 12 inductees. The inductees were:

• Dr. and Mrs. Albert L. Blumberg
• Mr. Phillip Dunk
• Mr. Louis and Mrs. Phyllis Friedman
• Mr. Lowell Glazer
• Mr. and Mrs. H. Hudson Myers Jr. 
• Mr. Thomas and Mrs. Lynne O’Donnell
• Perinatal Associates
• Mrs. Nancy Smith
• Mrs. Emmy Lee Steigelman
• Dr. Robert Bond Welch
• The estate of Elizabeth M. Christhilf
• The estate of Andrew Trost

Joe Keelty was a very accomplished, yet very humble man. He would have been proud of these members of our community who have generously supported our HealthCare system. But Joe would not have wanted any attention given to him. He gave to help others, not to be recognized for his philanthropy. We miss him, but his spirit lives on.

Passing of A Titan
For over 20 years, Dr. McGibbon served as GBMC’s chief of plastic and reconstructive surgery. During his surgical career at GBMC, he mainly performed reconstructive breast surgery, following breast cancer, and toward his later years, performed a significant amount of general cosmetic surgery. He retired in 2002 to spend full time as a professional artist.

He was also the founder of the annual GBMC Golf Classic. The event was initiated by Dr. McGibbon who realized the need for a special occasion to encourage togetherness among the GBMC family.  Since 1988, the annual event has generated tremendous camaraderie among the participants and has raised approximately $4 million to support our clinical programs.

In 2013, Dr, McGibbon was honored for his service as a GBMC surgeon and as the founder of The GBMC Golf Classic with a portrait located on the paneled wall behind the reception desk adjacent to the hospital’s General Operating Room registration and waiting areas. Dr. McGibbon’s picture is alongside other significant GBMC physicians James H. Dorsey, M.D., former chief of the Department of Gynecology, Pedro Garcia, M.D., former chairman of the Department of Anesthesiology and Geary L. Stonesifer, M.D., the first chairman of the Department of Surgery.

GBMC and the entire medical community benefited greatly from his presence and his actions. We will miss him dearly.

Kudos to Dr. Sternlicht!
Congratulations to Jeffrey Sternlicht, MD, on being named the 2018 Physician of the Year by the Maryland Chapter of the American College of Emergency Physicians (ACEP). Each year, this award is given to a Maryland physician who has made significant contributions in the field of emergency medical services (EMS).

The award acknowledges Dr. Sternlicht as a leader who motivates, inspires, and challenges his team while encouraging others to make the most of their strengths and using weaknesses as a chance to improve. His leadership and insight have taken his department to a higher level of emergency care.

Dr. Sternlicht is, without a doubt, deserving of this award and we are grateful for his service and dedication. Congratulations!

And It's Medical Laboratory Professionals Week!
This week is Medical Laboratory Professionals Week. According to The American Society for Clinical Laboratory Science, there are almost 300,000 practitioners of medical laboratory science in the country. This group of medical professionals have a vital role in the diagnosis and prevention of disease and are key members of any healthcare team. We are truly blessed and lucky to have an outstanding team of pathologists, technicians, phlebotomists, and staff. These behind-the-scenes heroes are essential members of the patient care team. I am so proud of our lab team who have always demonstrated excellence.

Thank you!!!
I want to thank everyone who participated in our third Walk a Mile in Her Shoes®:  The International Men’s March to Stop Rape, Sexual Assault & Gender Violence. We had about 250 participants and we raised approximately $37,500 for our SAFE and Domestic Violence programs. On Saturday, male and female participants walked a mile around GBMC’s campus in high heels (or red tennis shoes) to shed light on this problem and to show support for the victims.

I am proud that GBMC continues to be a leader in helping the victims of sexual assault and domestic violence and in educating the community to reduce these attacks. I want to thank the GBMC Foundation, our Volunteer Auxiliary and all parties who worked together to make this year’s event another success!

Thank You to Our Volunteers!

This week, we're celebrating National Volunteer Appreciation Week and it is a special opportunity for GBMC HealthCare to pay tribute to the volunteers who devote their time, energy, and talent to serving the patients and associates at our hospital. We cannot achieve our mission of health, healing, and hope without them.

Volunteering is a great way to give back to the community and help those in need. With more than 900 volunteers in the hospital and at Gilchrist, GBMC has one of the largest volunteer auxiliaries in Maryland.

Our volunteers give selflessly to others, and they understand the value and importance of a friendly smile and the comfort of kind words in the healing process. The efforts of our volunteers are rewarding for them, in addition to being of great service to our patients and our employees. I’m extremely grateful for their dedication and hard work and for the wonderful job that they do.

This week, I was able to attend a few of the volunteer appreciation lunches to serve food, have a bite to eat and to say, “thank you” to them. I really enjoyed myself and was reminded again that at GBMC we are truly blessed to have such a fantastic volunteer auxiliary.

To all our volunteers, you’re a critical part of our healthcare team and I thank you for dedicating your time to make our health care system better.

How Good is GBMC as a Place to Work? Hearing from Our People
Among my responsibilities as the Chief Executive, I must ensure that GBMC is constantly in action to improve as an organization to work for. Our fourth aim is to exhibit our joy in serving others. This is not possible if our people are not feeling the support of our company. If they do not feel supported, they cannot fully engage in the other three aims of delivering the best health outcome with the best care experience and the least waste of resources.

So, every year we ask our people to complete our Employee Engagement Survey.

The survey is open through this coming Monday, April 23, and it should only take a few minutes to complete. I ask that all our employees complete the survey honestly. We need to know what you think to make the GBMC HealthCare system an even better place to work.

The survey is administered by Press Ganey, who compiles the data for us. We at GBMC never see individual responses. Your responses to the survey will remain CONFIDENTIAL. If you do, however, choose to include additional comments, these will be shared with your manager, but your name will not be given.
This summer, all employees will receive feedback on the survey results and action plans will be developed based on these results. Many of you last year asked for a shorter survey so this year the survey has 11 fewer questions!

Thank you so much for taking the survey.

If you have any questions about the survey, please call your Human Resource Business Partner.

Put on Your Red Shoes and Let’s Go for A Walk!
April is Sexual Assault Awareness Month and the statistics are quite alarming. Did you know that on average, there are over 320,000 victims of rape and sexual assault, a year, in the United States and in 8 out of 10 cases of rape, the victim knew the person who sexually assaulted them?

Our Sexual Assault Forensic Examination (SAFE) and Domestic Violence programs do so much for our community and we are grateful for their work in helping the victims of sexual assault and in educating the community to reduce these attacks. The assessment and treatment of victims of sexual assault are very complex. Expertise and caring are required not only to address the medical and psychological needs of the patient but also to complete the forensic work necessary to aid law enforcement in the identification of the perpetrator and to see that justice is served.

GBMC also serves survivors of domestic violence, including survivors of Intimate Partner Violence (IPV). Our domestic violence program includes providing 24/7 in-house victim advocacy.

Sexual assault and domestic violence patients not only get quality medical-forensic treatment but also receive much-needed crisis intervention and safety planning. Under the leadership of, Laura Clary, our SAFE program is growing and expanding in new directions helping us to better meet our mission of health, healing, and hope for those in our community and our vision of serving everyone the way we want our own loved ones served.

Registered nurses in GBMC’s SAFE program are specifically trained and certified by the Maryland Board of Nursing to provide care for victims of sexual assault and domestic violence of all ages in a confidential, non-judgmental atmosphere. At no cost to the patient, these nurses focus on re-empowering survivors to begin the healing process, in addition to working toward ending sexual assault and IPV in the community.

To date, GBMC’s Domestic Violence Program has provided services to approximately 1,000 individuals and our SAFE program sees close to 200 patients annually. We come nowhere close to covering the cost of these programs with health insurance billing, so we require the financial help of the community.

So, tomorrow, Saturday, April 21, I encourage everyone to grab their friends and family and come out to the GBMC campus for our third annual Walk A Mile In Her Shoes®: The International March to Stop Rape, Sexual Assault, and Gender Violence. Men, women, and children will walk a mile around GBMC’s campus with many in red high heels (or red Converse). All proceeds from the event will benefit GBMC’s Sexual Assault Forensic Examination (SAFE) and Domestic Violence programs.

To learn more about how you can continue to help victims and this critical program that supports the health and wellness of our community click here. I hope that you will come out and walk with us and/or financially support the event.

Congratulations Harry!!
Harry S. Johnson, Esq., previous Chair of the Board of Directors and current member of our GBMC HealthCare Inc. Board, is being recognized with a lifetime achievement award by the Daily Record publication. This award recognizes attorneys and judges whose body of work over their careers makes them stand out. They are well respected in their profession, active in their community, and dedicated to growing the next generation of legal leaders.

Harry’s been involved with GBMC since the mid-1980s as a lawyer handling medical negligence cases on behalf of GBMC and its physicians. He was an inspiring and strong leader as Chairman from 2011 to 2014.

For those of you who know Harry, you know he is a very passionate man who has also accomplished a great deal in his life. As a partner at the law firm of Whiteford, Taylor & Preston, he has become one of the most distinguished attorneys in Maryland and is a past President of the Maryland State Bar Association. He serves on many prestigious committees of the American Bar Association and has served a myriad of community organizations through the years.

I can’t think of anyone who is more deserving of this award than Harry Johnson!
Congratulations!

Proud of What We Have Accomplished Together

Last week in Chicago, I did a little bragging about the GBMC HealthCare System and what we have accomplished under our four aims (the areas that best describe the care we want for our own loved ones): Best health outcomes; Best satisfaction; Least waste; Most joy for those providing the care. I gave a workshop along with my friend and colleague, Keith Poisson, our executive vice president and chief operating officer, at the annual congress of the American College of Healthcare Executives.


The title of our workshop was “A Community Health System Manages the Health of a Population.”

We described our work over the last eight years creating our vision and delivering on it. We talked about how strong our hospital has been for more than 50 years, and how we have built upon the excellent work of our hospital, hospice, employed physicians, and private practicing physicians to create a system of care that the patient would experience as a system. Keith presented the work with our service lines and how we have used continuous performance improvement tools such as Lean Daily Management to move closer to our vision every day. I presented about our development of advanced primary care using the patient-centered medical home and how this work has been aided by Maryland’s waiver and the global budgeted revenue system.

As we were presenting, I couldn’t help but reflect on how many of our people have worked hard on redesigning our systems to get us to where we are today, and how lucky I was to be associated with each one of them. Thank you!

Congratulations….
Dr. Robert Ferguson recently received the 2018 Dema C. Daley Founders Award from the Association of Program Directors in Internal Medicine (APDIM).

Dr. Ferguson, an attending physician and valued member of the teaching faculty for our Internal Medicine residency program, was recognized by APDIM for his dedication to exemplary teaching and innovative educational program management.

APDIM is the professional organization of accredited internal medicine residency programs whose core mission is to support program directors in the pursuit of excellence in graduate medical education for internal medicine.

The APDIM Dema C. Daley Founders Award is the organization’s highest distinction and honors a member of the internal medicine community recognized nationally as an educator, innovator, and leader. Congratulations, Dr. Ferguson!

Improving Parking on Our Campus

We've recently started communicating with the GBMC family about changes to our traffic flow and parking on our campus. We have begun to put gates on our garages and lots. In June, we will remove the gatehouse and install ticket dispensers and “tap and go” readers at six locations: Rose Lot (Visitors Only), Daffodil Garage, Iris Garage, Lily Garage, Tulip Garage, and South Chapman.

These changes are needed to make the entrance to our campus safer for vehicular traffic and to reduce delays when entering and exiting from our grounds during peak hours while also improving parking accessibility for our patients. Stacey McGreevy, our Vice President of Support Services, and her team have been working hard to make the transition as easy as possible for our people. As we implement this decentralized parking model, we are conducting periodic studies of our parking capacity to make changes in employee assignments. Our goal is to allow employees to park as close to their work site as possible with the caveat that capacity for patients and visitors is our number one priority. If there are changes to your parking assignment, employees will be notified in May.

All GBMC employees will receive an assigned home lot or garage and will be able to “tap and go” their badges to enter and exit our medical campus. Your GBMC ID badge will be automatically programmed to function at your assigned parking lot or garage’s reader and stickers will still be issued to monitor compliance at free parking areas such as the Bluebell and the Labor and Delivery parking lots, that will remain as patient-only parking. We will not be erecting parking gates at these lots as parking will be free for our patients. Any employees found parking in these lots will be towed. Employees who work at locations other than the GBMC Main Campus, such as Gilchrist employees and our primary care off-sites, will have open access to park in any garage due to the infrequency of visits to the campus.

Patients will use pay-on-foot stations, which will be installed at high-volume pedestrian locations or pay from their vehicle using cash or credit at garage gates. To ensure a smooth transition there will be attendants stationed at gates during the initial rollout. Patients and visitors will have four payment options:
1. Pay with cash or credit at a pay station, receive a ticket, and put the validated ticket in the ticket reader at the gate from their vehicle.
2. Pay with cash or credit at the gate pay station from their vehicle.
3. Pay the gate attendant with cash or credit.
4. Use a discounted or free parking ticket, if they received one, at any of the above payment location options.

Thank you for complying with our parking rules so that parking spaces are always available and accessible for our patients. All existing passes will be used during the transition. The booths will be staffed, and the existing passes will be accepted. Once existing passes have been exhausted, new passes will need to be purchased.

Doctors' Day
Today is National Doctors' Day across the United States. Because this year March 30th is a holiday in multiple religions, we are celebrating on Monday, April 2. We are very fortunate to have a wonderful medical staff, who work very hard and do marvelous things. Our physicians throughout the healthcare system make a tremendous difference in the lives of patients every day. I am glad that at least one day a year we reach out and thank physicians for all the things they do 365 days a year.

In honor of Doctors' Day and your physician, please share your thoughts and inspiring stories of patient care here… 

Happy Holiday
On a final note, the GBMC HealthCare family sends its best wishes to everyone celebrating Passover and Easter this Sunday.

The Calling of Gilchrist Kids: End of Life Care for Children and Support for Their Families

The recent rebranding campaign for Gilchrist was designed to inform the community that it is more than hospice. Gilchrist provides outstanding elder care for fully active seniors, patients with chronic disease and frailty, and those nearing end of life. Annually, Gilchrist delivers elder medical care to 7,500 individuals, hospice care to 5,400 patients, and grief counseling and bereavement services to 6,500 people. The organization also counsels people on advance care planning, guiding them through decisions about their treatment and helping them make informed choices about their end-of-life care. They truly are living up to being “more than hospice.”

What many people do not realize is that Gilchrist also has a pediatric hospice program, which provides all-inclusive end-of-life care for infants, children, and young adults with life-limiting illnesses. It is the only facility in the state with inpatient children’s hospice beds. Gilchrist Kids cares for children dying from cancer, cardiac disease, untreatable infectious disease or blood disorders, life-limiting genetic or congenital diseases, and other conditions. The program also offers perinatal support for parents-to-be who have learned that their unborn child may have an incurable illness, as well as respite care, which is critical in improving the quality of life for terminally ill children and their families.

Gilchrist opened over 20 years ago as a small hospice organization serving a few dozen people It has grown to now serving thousands of individuals throughout Central Maryland—in homes, in skilled nursing and residential care facilities, and in three inpatient hospice centers in Towson, Howard County, and Baltimore.

To find out more about Gilchrist kids, I encourage you all to watch the following two interviews with staff members from Gilchrist Kids from the shows “To Your Health” and “Greater Living,” which were broadcasted last week on the GBMC Facebook page. I think you will find them very enlightening and you will be very proud of all that they do.

To Your Health



Greater Living