A MESSAGE FROM

Bryce Walker

On behalf of Grand River Hospital's board of directors, I'd like to welcome you to our website.

Grand River Hospital continues to provide exceptional care with compassion to area patient. Our nearly 3,000 care staff members are dedicated to providing high-quality care through our 14 clinical programs and services. We appreciate their on-going efforts to continuously improve the quality of care we provide.

We are committed to working in partnership with health providers to offer a range of services for patients. We especially appreciate our close working relationship with St. Mary's General Hospital in providing a range of acute care programs.

As we look ahead, our priority remains quality improvement within the hospital. We have a range of activities underway as part of this effort. These include but are not limited to:

• Our candidacy in the Registered Nurses' Association of Ontario's Best Practice Spotlight Organization program, to introduce new evidence-based steps to the nursing care we provide;
• Our work to reduce our hospital standardized mortality ratio, which compares expected deaths within a hospital to those that actually occur. We have made significant progress in reducing our ratio, and are now below the national average; and
• Our membership in the MORE OB program to continuously improve patient safety during childbirth.

We want to demonstrate this commitment to quality health services by making a range of health indicators available on our website so you can monitor the progress we are making.

We realize the challenges health providers face in caring for our aging population and ensuring we maintain services within a difficult funding environment. We will work to innovate and collaborate with our partners to help patients return to the community after their hospital stay.

We also look forward to an increasing role in medical education, which will help provide Waterloo Region residents with improved care options in their community. We also value our work in nursing education with Conestoga College's nursing program, along with a range of health sciences programs in the region and provincially.

We are currently developing a new website to better meet your needs. However, I'd encourage you to browse through our current pages. We look forward to updating you on the progress of our hospital in the months and years ahead. And should you or a member of your family need our hospital's services, we look forward to providing exceptional care with compassion.

Bryce Walker,
Chair of the GRH Board of Directors