Danville Free Clinic awarded $1.4 mil.
Danville Register and Bee
Friday, February 1, 2008
The Danville Regional Foundation has announced this morning it will award a grant of $1.4 million to the Free Clinic of Danville.
The money will allow the clinic to hire a full-time nurse practitioner, a full-time executive director and a full-time clinical director, as well as get the resources they need to develop a long-range strategic and business plan.
The Danville Regional Foundation holds the money made from the sale of Danville Regional Medical Center in 2005.
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Letter to Employees, February 7, 2007
Dear DRMC Associates, Physicians and Volunteers:
Thank you for all your efforts to provide healthcare to the citizens of the Dan River Region. Providing healthcare, saving lives, and improving the quality of the lives of our friends, family and neighbors is a high calling, and you are answering that call each and every day. Delivering on the high expectations of those we serve is a tremendous responsibility, shared by everyone – physicians, nurses, technical and support staff, volunteers, managers and administration.
It’s no secret that to be successful in meeting this responsibility, we must work together. We have seen in our Emergency Department the good things that can happen when staff, physicians and management work together effectively. The reduction in wait times and fewer patients leaving without treatment are ample proof. You should all be proud of this accomplishment.
It is our hope that all of us on the hospital team, and indeed the entire community, can come together around Danville Regional and make it a source of genuine pride and positive economic activity for this area. Coming together is way overdue.
When Mr. Bill Carpenter, CEO of LifePoint and three other corporate officers were in our hospital in January, they openly apologized for mistakes made at the onset of the hospital sale. Knowing what they know at this point in time, they would have definitely done things differently. LifePoint has committed the support and resources needed to make DRMC a hospital of which we all can be proud. In addition, we, as leaders in different areas of the hospital, commit our time and energy to that same goal.
The important thing to remember is that on one person or small group can make this hospital successful. It will take the support and commitment of every single one of us who are connected to DRMC in any way. We need your help to make this happen.
Going forward won’t be easy. Any organization of this size and complexity has issues.
But it is time to move on, and move ahead. Constructive suggestions are always OK, and in fact welcomed, because there is almost always more than one “right way” to accomplish goals. Bitter, destructive criticism isn’t OK. There’s a reason they call it “holding grudges,” because the only person who feels bad is the one holding them. It’s time for us to let these go.
Good things can happen if we channel our energies on positive activities. Never has this been more important than now.
During 2006 and 2007 $26 million is being invested to create some good things – the build out of the 5th and 6th floors, the new radiation/oncology equipment, addition of PACS and a new state of the art CT machine. These improvements, coupled with your caring approach, will provide better, more complete care for our patients, close to home.
Recent patient satisfaction scores have improved, and will continue to improve as long as we focus our efforts on providing the best care for our patients and support for each other. We also fully recognize the importance of improving staff and physician satisfaction, and the positive impact this will have on the patients we serve.
We also have a big challenge that will require everyone’s best – our Joint Commission accreditation review, which will occur sometime in the next couple of months. When you think about it, it is not a stretch to say that the lifeblood of this community is dependent upon Danville Regional maintaining Joint Commission accreditation.
Joint Commission accreditation is a key to the continued success of one of the largest employers in the region, and the place where the majority of our citizens come to receive healthcare. An accredited hospital makes the community more attractive for residents who already are here, and also for those people and their employers who are looking for a good place to live, work, play and invest. It also directly impacts the livelihood of all associates and physicians.
We need to place a tremendous amount of importance and urgency around preparing for Joint Commission, because accreditation is vital to all of us. While some might think loss of accreditation hurts LifePoint, the real losers are those of us who live and work in this community. We must join together to protect one of our most valuable community assets. Our region’s economic recovery depends on it.
So we go back to our original points: we are fortunate to be in a position to serve others, which is a tremendous responsibility we accept every day. All of us want to make this a better place to work, and a better place for our neighbors to receive treatment. We are committed to supporting you and know that together we will make DRMC the very best it can be. We appreciate each of you.
Sincerely,
Dr. Betty Jo Foster
Chairman, DRMC Advisory Board
Arthur M. Doloresco
President/ CEO
Richard A. Smith, M.D.
Chief of Staff
14 comments:
Wonderful news for the Free Clinic!They deserve every penny.
Now.... any truth to the rumor that the foundation is being dissolved?
Where in the world did that rumor come from?
They do deserve it but I'd be glad to give away a little over a million if someone would give me 200 million with no recourse!!!!!!
It figures, someone ALWAYS has to look for something negative! Of course these people don't want to help improve anything, just complain, complain, complain.........10 years from now they will still be complaining, different issues, same complainers!!
Do the math....$200+ million earned $13 million in interest last year (the financials are on their site).
They are going to give away $10 million a year in grants.
So, in ten years, they will have given $100 million away...which is GREAT, don't get me wrong...but they will have earned $30 million in interest (at minimum) and never touched the original amount (just based on last year's income).
Not a bad proposition.
That's still not money that the remaining workforce will ever see.
The damage caused by lost disposable income that would be spent in Danville is immeasurable .
You can voodoo the math anyway you want the financial impact on the working class is huge. The grants will never be taxed and the corporation will find ways to decrease that amount through corporate "goodwill " and unusual and nonrecurring expenses (travelers too) 100 million in ten years is nothing compared to a nonprofit that contributed to betterment of the public willingly and generated income FOR the community to be spent IN the community. The DRMC that made 60+ million per year in profit and returned it back to the community is a far better resource Don't believe it? ask all of the non profit teaching facilities around us ALL of the benefits and NONE of the drawbacks of a nonlocal Corporate greedmonger. We lost our chance to ever be a TOP 100 in the US when we were sold out and lost our nonprofit DIRECT affiliation.
AND it's not negative it's the truth it's great that they have the money , it will help people but selling out the area to get it HORRIBLE....
Ok so tell us what we don't already know! Get over it already and lets get on with our lives and quit living in the past. Thats why we live in america, land of progress and land of the free. How long are we going to keep whining about the way it used to be,lets work with what we have and make a better future. Can't you be at all happy that the Clinic is getting some well needed help, I, personally know a lot of people that will benefit from it. And yes it is negative when the only positive comment is 5 words long at the end of the post.
"it's great that they have the money , it will help people..."
You obviously didn't read.
"land of progress and land of the free"
Do you watch the news and read the paper? Where do you live ? do you have any influence even in your immediate circle?
Narrow narrow minds.
"Can't you be at all happy that the Clinic is getting some well needed help,"
Yes, we are. That was the point of the original post, I believe.
"lets work with what we have"
I don't know if you realize all the baggage that sentence entails, my friend.
WOW!! Thats really great for all of us that the Free Clinic is getting this money. It will allow services to be provided for those that can't afford insurance and I can't think of any thing better to do with the money. I don't want to be negative, but we should be glad there is this money coming back to the community, because I don't know how many gigantic 1 1/2 percent annual raises I can get til I'll be better off unemployeed rather than under paid.
But, I'm sure glad the Free Clinic got the money. That may be where I have to go for my medical care....there and the ER.
The Free Clinic well deserves the money. They should have gotten the $3 million that Chatham Baptist church was picked to control. A million would have been plenty for that. By the way How much did the Institute get?
A million should go a helluva longer way than hiring a couple folks and doing a strategic plan. Typical waste involved with small town grant programs. mm-mmm-mmmm
This is terrific... but they could do even so much more. Let's hope that they do (and not just give money to the Institute, which does nothing to better the community).
Ah yes "The Institute" one of danville's monuments to stupidity, and we could even add the "cyberpark" with the slogan -"Leading the way at being 20 years behind."
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