Holiday greetings from board and senior leadership
Kip Woodward, Board Chair
Dr. David Ostrow, President & CEO
As we think back to the many successes and challenges of the past year this holiday season, we both do so with a feeling of pride and admiration for everyone at VCH. As Chair of the Board of Directors and President & CEO, respectively, we each have a unique and yet shared perspective on what makes this organization great. We constantly hear and see examples of how our health care system and the people in it – all of you – continually rise to the challenges of providing a complex array of medical and health services for our ever-increasing population.
Growing demand
Our Emergency Room visits continue to grow by almost five percent annually, with now more than 1,000 people using our ERs every day. Scheduled and unscheduled surgeries, inpatient days and discharges are also on the rise, along with home care and health clinic visits. Yet again, this has been achieved while maintaining the required fiscal discipline.
A year of achievements
The past year has seen VCH finally moved forward with approval for the Joe & Rosalie Segal Family Centre in Vancouver and ground breaking for the Hope Centre at Lions Gate Hospital. Both will move our commitment and capacity to support people with mental health and their families forward in leaps and bounds. Neither of these facilities would have been possible without the drive of our foundations, partners and the community.
We have seen our philosophy of becoming a “People First” organization become a reality through our True North goals and engagement strategies that were identified during a recent Accreditation Canada visit as “outstanding”. Our innovative Attendance Wellness Program has reduced VCH’s sick time to the lowest of all BC health authorities and generated $13 million in savings that go back to direct patient care. Our administrative costs are also the lowest in the province.
Along with the Vancouver Coastal Regional Caucus and interim First Nations Health Authority, VCH signed the historic Vancouver Coastal Partnership Accord in 2012, creating a new path to improving health outcomes, programs, and services for First Nations in our region.
These achievements, and so many others, have been made possible through the innovation, courage, leadership and hard work of all of you – our staff, physicians and volunteers. You continue to strengthen our organization and the people we serve.
Thank you
On behalf of the VCH Board and Senior Leadership Team, our sincere thanks for your continued commitment to VCH and to the patients of BC who we serve. And knowing that we are a 24/7 operation, we offer extra thanks to those of you who will be working or on call during the holidays. You will be there when someone needs us most, inevitably at a time when they want to be with us the least. Thank you for this.
To all of you, please accept our best wishes for a joyous and healthy holiday season.