Year In Review - Therapy Garden Video

It is hard to believe that 2008 is almost at an end .We have a lot to be proud of! We have had an outstanding year of accomplishments. This time last year we were settling into our new home in New Brunswick, we consolidated several of our sites and we’re still celebrating being named the Best Place to Work in New Jersey by NJ Biz and among the top 100 best hospitals to work in country by Modern Healthcare!

To close out the year, we had two things left to do in New Brunswick, open the pedestrian bridge from the parking garage and complete the therapy garden. I am thrilled to tell you that both were completed in December.

As you recall, the Therapy Garden was funded through a combination of employee contributions and friends and family of our former patients.

We created the garden to add some green in the middle of this concrete jungle, to take a part of Mountainside and Toms River with us. It is also a place where you each could be part of the creation of our new inpatient hospital. Truly, it is an amazing experience to go out there and read the names of those who gave and those who gave in honor or memory of loved ones. One of you told me that you gave in memory of your sister because you wanted her to be with you every day. It is a special garden of healing, both of the children who will receive their therapy there, and those who we celebrate.

Below is a video that the Foundation created that commemorates the opening of the garden and reminds us all why we have chosen to be a lasting part of Children’s Specialized Hospital.

Thank you for another wonderful year.

May the New Year bring good health and joy to you and your family.

Children's Specialized Hospital Foundation's Therapy Garden Video

Face to Face with the CEO

My thanks to all of you who attended and participated in the employee meetings. It is always good to have a chance to provide you an update on big picture issues that face our hospital, and be able to answer your individual questions. This time I asked Directors to solicit questions ahead of time and it was very helpful to be able to have those and answer them. Some of you also sent me questions from a request I made in the wrap up - those were also appreciated.

The best part of these meetings is the chance to be with all of you and have that face to face time. I was tremendously excited to share with all of you our new vision and mission adopted by our Board of Directors. This new focus is reaffirming that in these difficult times, uncertain times; we are still positioned with our eyes on the future and trying to make the best choices for our children and their families. Often these choices are comparable to Hobson choices - no matter what you do, there will be pain but you have to try and limit the people impacted and make sure we are doing what is necessary to be able to provide the core services to our children.

As I have listened to President Elect Obama speak over the last few weeks, he continues to talk about their being pain in order to get to a place of stability. We hope that his pain will not impact our children, but given the magnitude of the crisis in front of us as a country, it is hard to imagine that we all won’t be asked to do more with less.

Senior Leadership and the Director's will continue to work together to make sure that we have the focus on both our children and our finances. Your feedback, ideas and thoughts are always appreciated.

We have my entire presentation available on our intranet – take a look to see what our new mission, values are and where we stand on meeting our annual goals.

Thank you for your continued support for our children.