Five Commitments. One Vision for GBMC.

When Paari Gopalakrishnan, MD, MBA, became president and CEO of GBMC HealthCare last September, he began by listening. 

He listened to physicians, nurses and staff. He met with patients, families, community members and donors. He asked what makes GBMC special, where it could be better and what the community will need from its health system in the years ahead. 

On September 15, at Vision GBMC, an evening event to recognize donors and introduce future plans for the system, Dr. Gopalakrishnan shared what he heard and where those conversations are leading GBMC next. 

He began by looking back. 

At GBMC’s dedication more than 60 years ago, President Dwight D. Eisenhower spoke about the hospital as evidence that Americans had not forgotten their responsibility to one another. Much has changed since then, Dr. Gopalakrishnan told the audience. Medicine has changed. Technology has changed. The way people receive care has changed. 

But the promise behind GBMC has not. 

That idea helped shape a refreshed Mission for GBMC HealthCare: At every stage of life, we provide the care that we would want for our loved ones. 

The words “every stage of life” reflect the breadth of what GBMC has become. A relationship with GBMC may begin with the birth of a baby and continue through pediatric and primary care, specialty care, surgery or a hospital stay. As needs change over a lifetime, that relationship can extend to geriatric medicine, palliative care, Gilchrist and hospice. The goal is not simply to offer all of those services, but to connect them, so that the care someone receives at one stage of life helps inform the care that comes next. 

It is an ambitious idea: to know people not only as patients in a particular moment, but to be a trusted partner throughout their lives. Five commitments will guide GBMC in bringing that vision to life. 

Care You Can Trust, Every Single Time is a commitment to quality, safety and clinical excellence. At Vision GBMC, families involved with GBMC’s Maternal Newborn Parent and Family Advisory Council helped illustrate what happens when new moms become partners in making excellent care even better after their birth experiences. 

The Right Care, Right When You Need It recognizes that excellent care only matters if people can access it. Marcia Hammond’s experience, also shared that evening, showed the difference a connected health system can make when the right people come together around one unique patient.

Care That Feels Personal, Because It Is speaks to something deeply rooted in GBMC’s culture. Through Matt Bollinger’s experience with Gilchrist, guests saw what it means to care not only for a diagnosis, but for a person and the people who love them at the end of life. 

More of the Best, Closer to Home is GBMC’s commitment to thoughtful growth. The story of orthopaedic patient Dedric Battle demonstrated what that growth can mean: building exceptional programs around the services the community needs most. 

And Strength Today, So We’re Here Tomorrow recognizes that fulfilling a mission requires a strong organization behind it. Marketplace Rounds offered one glimpse of how GBMC is bringing teams together to solve problems, improve operations and build a stronger health system for the future.

Five commitments, illustrated through five very different stories. Together, they point toward one vision of care built around the person receiving it.

That is also the thinking behind Care Built Around You, a phrase the GBMC community will hear more often in the months and years ahead. It is a simple promise, but an ambitious one: to see each patient as a person first, with individual needs, preferences and a life beyond their medical record. It means care that is shaped around you, not simply delivered to you. 

For GBMC, getting there will require continued investment in people, programs, technology and facilities. It will also require the partnership of the community that has supported GBMC from its earliest days. 

As Dr. Gopalakrishnan reminded guests at Vision GBMC, philanthropy is not separate from GBMC’s strategy. It is part of how the organization moves forward. More than six decades after GBMC opened its doors, the responsibility to one another remains. What comes next is about new and better ways to live up to it.