Have a healthy, happy holiday
Have a healthy, happy holiday

On behalf of the KGH Board of Directors and the Executive Team we would like to extend season’s greetings to everyone who works, learns and volunteers at KGH as well as to our patients, their families and our community. 

For KGH, there is no doubt 2016 will be one for the history books. The big news of course was our announcement last June to formally integrate with Hotel Dieu Hospital after decades of close partnership. Over the past six months, board members and people at both hospitals have come together to tackle the legal, financial and regulatory work needed to bring the new organization to life by April 1, 2017. So far, we’ve been making impressive progress and much of it has been thanks to the ideas and feedback people across KGH and HDH have shared with us in staff Team Talks sessions and in the integration survey we ran in the fall. At the moment, we are busy hearing from people about what the new name for our organization should be and lots of great ideas are pouring in.

Along with the integration work, we also made major contributions to the ongoing Health Care Tomorrow Hospital Services initiative in 2016. It’s aiming to create a more seamless hospital system for patients and families and to make the best use of resources across the region. As part of this phase, detailed planning is underway to support hospitals across the region to further share Laboratory Services, Decision Support and Information Technology.

And right here at KGH, our focus as always has been on delivering Outstanding Care, Always by transforming the patient experience through a relentless focus on quality, safety and service and patient- and family-centred care. This has included the major investment we made in our clinical labs of an Automated Chemistry Track to streamline how patient specimens are tested. We also significantly reduced the number of specimen collection errors across the hospital, reaching an all-time low earlier this year.

When it comes to keeping our hospital clean, we continue to put our teams to the test in independent audits and achieved our highest overall average score yet of 85 per cent, with many clinical areas surpassing 90 per cent. Other improvement examples include changes we made to our bed map to improve patient flow by ensuring the right people are being cared for in the right place by the right interprofessional team. In July, we were proud to open an Indigenous healing room in the Connell wing where patients and family members can perform culturally significant ceremonies.

It was also a busy year on the research front with the announcement that a group of our researchers will be co-leading a $12.5 million study to improve treatment for gastrointestinal disease. KGH also supported the “Healthier, Wealthier, Smarter” campaign run by the Council of Academic Hospitals of Ontario and its accompanying virtual research tour. All this while construction began on our new W.J. Henderson Centre for Patient-Oriented research that will allow clinicians to take their research to a new level and improve patient care within Kingston and beyond.

And speaking of construction, this year KGH received funding from the province to proceed with detailed planning for our Phase 2 redevelopment project that will aim to bring us many new much-needed facilities.  Similarly we received approval to begin construction in 2017 for a second MRI machine.

On a lighter note, you may remember that KGH made international headlines this summer when a team of window washers dressed up as superheroes for the benefit of our patients in pediatrics, bringing smiles to our patients and many others. Also last spring, we gathered on our lawn to celebrate the 175th anniversary of the first meeting of the Province of Canada’s Parliament in the Watkins wing. 

Let us also take this opportunity to thank everyone who works, learns or volunteers at KGH on behalf of everyone we serve in our community and region. We look forward to what 2017 will bring and it does promise to be a busy and exciting year as we work to create a new integrated hospital that we can all continue to be proud of. We wish you the very best of the holiday season.

Jim Flett, Interim President & CEO
George Thomson, Chair of the KGH Board of Directors