Celebrating a new year and a new vision for Beebe Healthcare
I was recently asked by Beebe Medical Foundation President Judy Aliquo to write an article for the new year about Beebe Healthcare’s Celebrate Excellent Care program. I readily agreed, because writing about our Celebrate Excellent Care program is my opportunity to celebrate the amazing people who work at Beebe. I’m really proud of what they do every day to care for our community, to heal those who need our help, and to provide support and compassion to patients, families, and friends.
But first, I want to say thank you to Dennis Forney and the Cape Gazette for allowing us to celebrate our wonderful team members at Beebe Healthcare every week. As people who work in healthcare, we know that being able to show gratitude and thanks to others is an important part of the healing process.
By sharing these wonderful stories, our patients get to celebrate and recognize their Beebe heroes, and continue their healing and recovery. And because the Cape Gazette helps us share these stories with our entire community, everyone sees what a difference Beebe team members are making in the lives of families, friends, and neighbors.
Healthcare across our great country is undergoing many necessary changes. Our healthcare system can do a better job of improving quality, reducing costs, and enhancing the patient experience. At Beebe Healthcare, our doctors, nurses, and clinical and administrative staff are working every day to get even better at what we do. Our goal is to be among the top 10 percent of all hospital health systems in the country. And that starts with a commitment by everyone in our organization.
All of us in healthcare understand that we need new care delivery models, standardization and adoption of best practices, and facilities that support the needs of all the communities we serve. At Beebe Healthcare, we understand that more care is being delivered outside the hospital, in lower-cost settings, and ideally closer to where people live, so access to care is not an obstacle. And our wonderful team members need to be working in state-of-the-art facilities that support their best efforts to help patients.
Several years ago, as Beebe Healthcare was celebrating its 100th anniversary, its leaders, including board members, doctors, and executives, set out to prepare Beebe for the future, to think about how to provide the Next Generation of Care for our community. That plan involves developing a new campus in the South Coastal region with a free-standing emergency department and a second cancer center, and building a new inpatient facility at the Rehoboth Beach Health Campus to include minimally invasive procedures, our Center for Robotic Surgery, and a new home for labor and delivery and Women’s and Children’s Health Services.
Renovating the Margaret H. Rollins Lewes Campus includes converting semi-private rooms to private, and introducing an advanced, specialized hybrid operating room and electrophysiology lab to support our cardiologists. We also have plans to build a free-standing emergency department in Georgetown to serve those in the county center.
The cost to develop, build, and expand our facilities approaches $240 million. While we are going to borrow or finance most of that sum, we are also looking to our community for financial support. Recently, on the steps of our historic Benjamin F. and Helen M. Shaw Building, we announced the largest capital campaign in Beebe Healthcare’s history, called I Believe in Beebe.
We are looking to raise $34 million from our community to support these projects, and many have already stepped forward and showed the trust they have in our vision. On Oct. 29, we announced that we had already raised $29 million toward our ultimate goal.
That is the largest amount of money ever raised in Beebe’s history, and is propelled in part by the largest single donation ever made to Beebe Healthcare, a $10 million gift from the Margaret and Randall Rollins family and the Ma-Ran Foundation. But the most impressive thing about our campaign is that every gift counts, and every dollar is important to us in our plans for the Next Generation of Care.
As Beebe Healthcare has grown over the years, our community has been right there supporting us. We feel so fortunate to have the financial and charitable support of our community, and their trust in what we do. We know from our Celebrate Excellent Care program that many of our donors are indeed grateful patients. They have become Beebe Believers because of their experiences with our team members, the amazing people you read about as our patients celebrate their excellent care.
On behalf of all the doctors, nurses, and other members of our team at Beebe Healthcare, thank you for your support, thank you for recognizing and acknowledging our terrific people, and thank you for your gratitude and trust in what we do. It’s truly an honor and a privilege to be part of the team at Beebe, and I am very proud to read the wonderful things said about them each week as we Celebrate Excellent Care at Beebe Healthcare.
As a community-based, not-for-profit healthcare system, Beebe Healthcare depends on the generous support of individuals, corporations, businesses, and private foundations. All gifts to Beebe Healthcare, large or small, are tax-deductible and are channeled through Beebe Medical Foundation. Please consider making a gift today. To make your proud personal donation or to learn more about how Beebe is creating the Next Generation of Care, go to www.nextgenerationofcare.org or contact the Beebe Medical Foundation, 302-644-2900 or foundation@beebehealthcare.org.
Happy New Year!
