Shrine Hospital News

A Message From Ralph Semb, Chairman for Shriners Hospitals Board of Trustees

Well, now is the time to start planning for the Imperial Council Session which is going to be held in Anaheim. Our Imperial Potentate has done a great job of planning this one at a world class resort. Disneyland. It should be fun. At our Joint board meeting in April, Warren Upton, Chairman of the Jurisprudence and Laws Committee provided us with what was going to be in the call. Surprise, nothing on the Hospital side and only a few minor things on the Fraternal side . For the Chairmen and Vice Chairmen who will be there, we are planning a luncheon as we did last year. It will be on Monday in room 201A at the Anaheim Convention Center. Please let me know if you are planning to attend as I need a count.

Now, just an update on some of our Doc’s. The Chief of Staff at our Twin Cities Hospital had a cold, started coughing a lot and Oops, hurt his back. Well, can you guess who ended up on the other end of the Scalpel? Yes, it was Dr. Guidera. He was operated on last week and I spoke with him minutes after he woke up. A little silly, but he said he was feeling well. A week later, we had to remind him to “Listen to his Doctor”. Even though Dr. Carey Mieke had fractured his neck last fall, he was in good shape to take over the reins while Dr. Guidera is out recuperating. Let me think about his, two of our top surgeons at the Twin Cities hospital with a back injury? Well, the neck is connected to the back.

I am very concerned about the staffing in our hospitals. I have spoken on many occasions about our need for Pediatric Orthopeadic Surgeons. Well, we are also looking for Anesthesiologists, Radiologists and Surgeons and have 15 openings. We have many openings and we are concentrating on Erie at this time, as they only have the Chief of Staff. The Board and executive committee are doing all they can to work with the local hospitals and universities to get the much needed help.

In Chicago, our Chief of Staff, Dr. Peter Sturm underwent bypass surgery. Actually on the same day as Dr. Guidera was in Surgery. Dr. Sturm is home recuperating and is doing excellent. This was a Triple bypass and is expected to be out from 4 to 6 weeks. It will then be a while before he can practice surgery again.

Our Chief of Staff at Houston, Dr. Richard Haynes, has announced his retirement scheduled for this November. Dr. Haynes is the President of the American Board of orthopeadic Surgery. Dr. Haynes has been very active while watching over the medical staff in Houston. We all wish him well in his retirement.

Dr. Perry Schoenecker will step down from his Presidency of the Pediatric Orthopeadic Society of North America. Then he will still have duties to perform, but more importantly, he will be helping with the issues involving the construction of the new hospital in St. Louis.

Dr. Harry Kim, Assistant Chief of Staff at our Tampa hospital, will be the recipient of the famed “Arthur Huene” award for his excellence in research.

Dr. Colen Mosley, Chief of Staff in Los Angeles, has just completed his term as the Chairman of the Annual meeting for the Academy of Orthopeadic Surgeons. This is a two year commitment. The good news is that he was recognized for doing such a great job, that he retained the position for another two years. In this position, he directs all major educational, technical and administrative aspects of this large organization.

Finally, Dr. Richard Kagan was elected the President of the American Burns Association. Dr. Kagan is the Chief of Staff at our Shriners Hospitals for Children in Cincinnati. He succeeds Dr. David Greenhalgh, the Chief of Staff at our Northern California hospital.

The Joint Boards adopted the Strategic Plan that the committee was working on for the past year. It was a giant task and we will now ask that the hospitals develop their own strategic plan based upon the new system strategies, vision and values.

We have also adopted a “Vision Statement” and two new core values:

Shriners Hospitals for Children will be the unquestioned leader, nationally and internationally, in caring for children and advancing the field in its specialty areas.

(The vision states SHC's aspirations for the future and sets high-level direction for the organization)

The following two core values, Innovation and Stewardship, were incorporated to better support the emerging vision.

Innovation: Continuously seek to improve the services we provide and be a leader in specialty pediatric health care.

Stewardship: Responsibly manage and apply our resources to maximize the benefit to our patients, their families, employees, fraternity members, and donors.

On construction projects, last week we had the “Kickoff” of the first Capital Fund Raising project in Honolulu. What a great event. Iwalani Dayton, did an outstanding job of coordinating this event. With the help of Miki Morris, the Acting Administrator and the rest of the hospital staff, it was just great and on behalf of the Joint Boards, a huge ‘Thanks”. So we are off and running with this project. We are planning the “Ground Breaking” that is scheduled on August 7^th of this year. Iwalani had the representatives from the Senators office, the Mayors office the Governors office and of course our distinguished Co-Chairs of the Fund raising Committee, Os Stender and Allan Dowsett.

Portland hospital the design and development continues. We expect to begin construction on that facility in late 2008.

We are in the process of finalizing the purchase of the property for the St. Louis Shriners Hospitals for Children. This will be an exciting time in that city. An Imperial Session is coming up in 2008 and the possible ground breaking of this unit around that time.

Our site selection for property in LA continues. We were unable to come to a reasonable agreement with the LA County for the property connected with USC. As you know, the state of California has ordered all hospitals that cannot meet the OSPOD requirements regarding earthquakes to vacate that building by 2013. The clock is ticking. We have to get busy to explore all options before us. Find other property, replace a part of the existing structure, or lease a floor in an existing facility keeping in mind that we keep all employees. We must think out of the box. The clock is ticking, and 2013 is near. These boards realize that with the complexity of surgeries today, we should be on the campus of a large Medical or Teaching Facility. We cannot give in to things that we are offered that are not within our regulations. We need to have the right size property, nothing less.

The National Junior Disability Championships will be held in Spokane at Shriners Hospitals for Children beginning July 21^st and continuing until July 28^th. This is a major undertaking, which over the past two years was held at our Shriners Hospitals for Children Tampa and where they did an excellent job. Spokane accepted the project for this year and our congratulations go out to them as they have exceeded their goal of financial support for the event.

The East West game will be played on January 19^th, 2008 in Houston. We will be planning the same excitement as we had in January 2007. The Counterparts Dinner on Thursday night, the Players Banquet on Friday night and the game on Saturday. The only question on the game day is the time and the location. This should not be a problem as we have two other fields that we are looking at and please note, this is only for the Saturday event. The rest of the week will be at the Reliant Stadium. You may ask why? Well, the Stadium is rented by the City and they had rented it to a Motocross event, and they will not change the date.

Next month, May, the Northern California Hospital Celebrates its 10^th anniversary.

Thanks again for all you do for Shriners Hospitals for Children and for our Fraternity. My regards to your Lady Rosemary and I hope to see you in Anaheim.

Fraternally,