Thursday, July 7, 2011

My very best for the future

At 12:01 this morning, Community General Hospital became Upstate University Hospital at Community General.

Dr. John McCabe, the CEO of Upstate University Hospital, and I completed Upstate's acquisition of Community yesterday afternoon.

Our photo was taken in the New York City offices of Hogan Lovells, the law firm that represented Upstate in the transaction.

Community General was represented by Bond Schoeneck & King.

The files in the foreground are a fraction of the documentation we needed to close the deal. Dr. McCabe and I have been signing thousands of documents since last week in order to accomplish the closing.

That represents the mechanics of the deal. The substance of the combination -- the benefits for the community -- will now follow.

A front page story in today's Post-Standard recaps the history of Community General Hospital as we begin this next chapter of service as part of Upstate. Community's roots go back to Syracuse General Hospital, located on Castle Street in Syracuse. Our progress is shown graphically in the logotypes, pictured below.

This is my final posting for More than Medicine. This began as a weekly letter to employees in the fall of 2002, when I became Community's President & CEO. That weekly letter morphed into More than Medicine in 2006.

Effective today, I am no longer CEO. I have accepted a Senior Vice President position at Upstate, and I will be working in the administrative offices at the main hospital downtown.


Meredith Price is Upstate's new Chief Administrative Officer at the Community General campus. She has already been at work here for several months, leading the transition planning with Community's senior management group.


At the final annual meeting June 15, I told the Board of Directors

". . . the fact of Upstate’s acquisition does not, by itself, make this a successful deal. This deal is going to take hard work. We will have to execute for Meredith Price and for Dr. McCabe. . . .I have asked my managers to give their loyalty and support to Meredith in this important effort," and I am pleased to say that they have done so.

Thank you, Drs. David Smith and John McCabe, and congratulations. To Meredith Price and her team, I wish you the very best for the future.

To CGH employees, volunteers, physicians, and board members: it has been a privilege and an honor to work with you.


2 comments:

Keith Cuttler said...

My congratulations and sincere best wishes to you and all my friends at Communty General. During a recently completed executive leadership course, I listened to a classmate, and Upstate employee, describe how wonderful the CGH staff had been during merger discussions. It was a surprise to her but not to me, and her words left me with a tremendous sense of pride for having been a small part of that organization.
My best to all.

רפואה סינית said...

פוסט מעולה תודה רבה!