Advancing Your Health

The holidays are a time for friends, families, loved ones and communities to come together, celebrate, and give thanks for our blessings and reflect on the year. At Emory Healthcare, we do all we can to promote and celebrate health year-round. But the holidays are a poignant time to celebrate and honor you, our community, for playing a key role in our accomplishments. With you as our partner, together we have proven we can achieve great things to improve the lives of so many. Over the course of any given year at Emory, there are innumerable accomplishments and developments to be excited about. In 2010, together we’ve seen some wonderful things happen in our Emory community:

• We performed our 300th lung transplant, and saw Jo Ellen Kimball celebrate her new found health.
• We watched our 500th heart transplant patient, Terry Green, serve as Grand Marshal for the Emory Healthcare 500, one of the biggest NASCAR events of the year! On race day, we were able to touch the lives of hundreds of race attendees from Georgia and states throughout the nation with free health screenings.
• We partnered with our community and participated in the 2010 Atlanta Heart Walk, and for the 9th year in a row, led the way in fund raising by raising almost $300,000 to give back to the American Heart Association to aid in their fight against heart disease and stroke.
• Our doctors performed more than $48.9 million in charity care for our community over the past year, and more than $20 million in uncompensated care at Grady.
• For the 20th year in a row, Emory University Hospital and many of its specialty programs were ranked as top in the nation by U.S. News & World Report’s 2010 list of America’s Best Hospitals.
• We participated in and sponsored the AJC Peachtree Road Race, an annual community event  for the 16th year in a row.
• We were recognized for being one of the only health care systems in the state to implement a mandatory flu vaccine policy for all employees in an effort to minimize the spread of influenza from caregivers and employees to patients and visitors. For our achievement of 100% compliance in 2009-2010, we were honored by the Georgia Medical Care Foundation. We were also honored by the Joint Commission with Gold Tier Status for our influenza vaccination rate.
• We partnered with Georgia Tech as the official health care provider for Georgia Tech Athletics, and the Atlanta Motor Speedway, as the official health care provider of the facility.
• We were honored with three Beacon Awards for Nursing Excellence. Only 300 ICUs (out of about 6,000) across the U.S. have received the prestigious award, and only 6 Beacon Awards have been given to programs in Georgia.
• We launched our blog, http://advancingyourhealth.org, which you’re reading now! It brings together our overall health care blog, as well as thematic blogs for heart & vascular, cancer, transplant, vision, weight management, and orthopedics, with more to come in 2011!
• We work with and support more than 20 local organizations through monetary and volunteer support, including the Atlanta Community Food Bank through our annual Virtual Can Food Drive.  Check out the full list of organizations we support!
• Every year our nursing students provide free health screenings and health clinics for migrant farm workers and their families in South Georgia.
• You — our community — named Emory University Hospital the “Consumer’s Choice” for the 13th year in a row.

We accomplished all of these things (and many more!) under the umbrella of our promise to deliver not just the best health care available, but the best patient-centered care around. This means that with every step we take and every goal achieved, our focus is on you — our community, our patients, and our families. So it is you, our community, who deserves the thanks this holiday season. We thank you for giving us the opportunity to focus on working with you, rather than on you, and we look forward to the opportunity to continue partnering with you in 2011 and for many years to come.