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A message from Deborah E. Stebbins

Chief Executive Officer, Alameda Hospital

Fall 2010

As Alameda Hospital heads into another challenging year for health care, there are two critical elements for continued success that dominate my attention: “building partnerships” and “generating growth.”

The good news is that we have just concluded our second consecutive year of achieving a positive bottom line and we have minimal debt on our balance sheet. That puts Alameda Hospital in a position of strength as we enter this era of unprecedented change in the health care industry.  I want to salute all of our employees, physicians and volunteers.  It’s been a challenging year, but their commitment to the future of Alameda Hospital has been vital to our accomplishments.

Against the backdrop of tremendous financial stress confronting all California hospitals, we will aggressively address our challenges by creating expanded community partnerships and geographic outreach.  While our past financial success has mostly been based on cost reduction and stabilization, our future success will be based on building new programs and volume.  We have crafted a strategic business plan designed to increase the number of people we serve, expand the range of hospital services, continue to improve the quality of care, while also producing a stronger revenue base.

We have set our sights on integrating ourselves with community entities such as:

In every case our goal is to improve the overall health of our community, determine unmet health care needs and build partnerships to help meet these needs.  

We plan to expand our geographic outreach by expanding services with a physical presence on other parts of the island, and providing more services to residents in our neighboring communities, such as Oakland and San Leandro.  

It is clear to us that the key to Alameda Hospital’s continued success is the development of new programs, such as wound care and acute rehabilitation, specialty programs that attract patients from well beyond the island.

Meanwhile we are ensuring the safety of our existing facilities and achieving compliance with state seismic requirements with a $10 million seismic retrofit plan.  In addition, we are upgrading and expanding our information systems and diagnostic imaging technologies by installing a new digital imaging system, replacing 80% of our imaging equipment and creating a comprehensive electronic health record to bring higher quality, safer medical care to our patients.

We’re also strengthening our medical staff by recruiting new specialists and primary care physicians.

Thank you for your ongoing support of Alameda Hospital. We couldn’t have achieved this success without you. Our commitment to excellence is unwavering.  We look forward to providing exceptional care for you and your loved ones, now, and for many years to come. I invite you to contact me with questions and comments (dstebbins@alamedahospital.org).

Wishing you the best of health,

Deborah E. Stebbins, Chief Executive Officer