Delivering healthier tomorrows begins today: An open letter to our community
To Our Community,
For more than 50 years, San Jose and the Silicon Valley have trusted Good Samaritan Hospital to care for their most important healthcare needs. Whether we’re delivering babies, treating emergencies, or performing heart surgeries, our goal always is to put patients first and provide them with the highest quality care.
The ever-evolving COVID-19 pandemic has made for an especially challenging time for hospitals across the country, including Good Samaritan. Our doctors, nurses, technicians, and operations colleagues have worked at full speed under difficult conditions to help the community safely navigate through the pandemic.
We’re incredibly proud of what our people have been able to do in the face of this challenge. During 2020 alone, we cared for more than 125,000 patients, including 46,000 who showed up in our Emergency Room. In fact, we were the first hospital in California to care for a COVID-19 patient, and we shared our ongoing learnings with our colleagues across the nation.
We nonetheless recognize that no matter how well we are doing today, we always can do more to deliver healthier tomorrows for the community. So, we’re taking steps to ensure we keep our promise of putting patients first by:
- Expanding upon our existing safeguards and quality processes to ensure patient safety.
- Adding more nurses to our team with higher wages and bonuses, despite a nationwide nursing shortage. We will continue to offer zero-out-of-pocket academic opportunities and flexible scheduling to make Good Samaritan a hospital where nurses have a home and a career.
- Continuing to recruit top-talented doctors in a variety of specialties who will complement our already robust team of physician experts and allow us to provide even more access to quality care for our entire community.
- Investing millions in new medical equipment and supplies for enhanced patient care. We spent an additional $14 million in July alone to meet those patient needs, based on requests from our trusted nurses and physicians.
These steps, and many more we have planned over the coming months, are also part of our commitment to care for our colleagues, who are the hands and hearts of our hospital. All of us are inspired by our mission to serve the community. Our guiding light is to provide the kind of care for our community that earns and keeps its trust.
It’s where healthier tomorrows begin.
At your service,
Tomi Ryba, CEO