 The Alliance recognized the hospital’s numerous healthcare initiatives and participation in community programs designed to improve the quality of life for residents in the Athens area. In the past year, St. Mary’s offered numerous wellness outreach and educational forums around stroke prevention and has built and dedicated the region’s first inpatient Hospice House. Recently, the hospital received approval on its certificate-of-need application to build a new cardiac cath/electrophysiology laboratory. St. Mary's also increased its participation in community service. Hospital president and CEO, Tom Fitz, is chairman of the regional United Way campaign and board member, Judge Steve C. Jones, is chairman of Partners for a Prosperous Athens, a community partnership designed to identify and address the causes of poverty in the area. “The Alliance is pleased to honor St. Mary’s as it celebrates 100 years of service to the Athens community,” said Monty M. Veazey, president of the Alliance. “St. Mary’s truly exemplifies the mission of Georgia’s not-for-profit hospitals and the hospital’s administration, staff, and physicians are all well deserving of this honor.” “With so many excellent hospitals in this state, being selected as the Large Hospital of the Year is truly a great honor,” said St. Mary’s President and CEO Tom Fitz. “I’m as proud as I can be of our dedicated, hard-working employees, medical staff, board members and volunteers. They have a relentless focus on excellence and quality that has made St. Mary’s better. We are committed to continuing to raise the bar for health care in our region.” From its founding in 1906 as Athens’ first hospital, St. Mary's has provided care to the people of Athens and Northeast Georgia. Today, St. Mary's is Northeast Georgia's only faith-based health care system, continuing a tradition of providing personalized care inspired by the Missionary Sisters of the Sacred Heart of Jesus and now sponsored by the Sisters of Mercy of the Americas. The system employs more than 1,400 people, and has a medical staff of nearly 370 physicians. 2006 has been a banner year for St. Mary’s, with the system seeing strong growth in existing services, as well as continuing to introduce new technologies and services to Athens and Northeast Georgia. Among St. Mary’s “firsts” in 2006 are: * Celebrating the 100th anniversary of St. Mary’s founding in 1906 as Athens’ first hospital. * Ranking as the No. 1 hospital in Georgia – with a perfect score of 100 – on the Partnership for Health and Accountability’s Relative Hospital Quality Index for care delivered in 2005. * Introducing to Northeast Georgia the fastest, most powerful 64-slice CT scanner on the market, the Toshiba Aquilion 64 CFX. The Aquilion 64 is so fast it can take images of the heart between beats, and so powerful physicians can clearly see structures as small as half a millimeter in diameter. * Opening the region’s first inpatient hospice house, located near Bogart on the campus of St. Mary’s Highland Hills Retirement Community, to provide care for hospice patients who cannot remain at home. * Securing re-certification as a Certified Primary Stroke Center. In 2003, the Joint Commission on the Accrediation of Healthcare Organizations certified St. Mary’s as the first Primary Stroke Center in North Georgia, only the second in the state and one of the first 20 in the nation. In addition to the award, the hospital received a $1,750 cash prize from contest sponsor Hayslett Group LLC, the Atlanta-based public relations firm that serves the Alliance and many of its member hospitals. # # # The Georgia Alliance of Community Hospitals (GACH) works for the best interests of community not-for-profit hospitals and Georgia’s health-care consumers. Its mission is to foster goodwill among community health-care professionals; to advocate the enactment of sound laws, rules and regulations affecting community hospitals; to conduct and disseminate research and to share ideas that improve the health-care delivery system in Georgia. For more information, visit the GACH Web site at www.gach.org. |
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