Sheila K. Riggs: Health Care Leader and Philanthropist

To say Sheila K. Riggs has dedicated her career to improving health care requires an asterisk. While she once chaired the GBMC HealthCare Board, served on the Executive Council of the Maryland Hospital Association (MHA) Board of Presidents and on the Board of the Maryland Hospital Education Institute, all this work was done as a volunteer. She put in long days and long weeks, directly involved in the activities of the hospital.  

“That was in the days when the Board Chair was more involved in the day-to-day workings of the hospital,” she recalls. “I was among the last chairs who could be here 8 hours a day.”

Joining soon after she moved to Baltimore from Boston in 1973, Sheila Riggs was the youngest to take up leadership when she became President and Chairman from 1978-1984.  

To talk with Mrs. Riggs is to learn about the many individuals who, like her, were dedicated to building for GBMC’s future. Jeanne Baetjer, after whom GBMC’s Center for Nursing Excellence is named, invited her to the Board.  She has fond memories of other GBMC founders like Mary Gwynn Erlandson, Virginia Sherwood, Virginia Kennedy (Karr), Michael Yaggy, and many more.  

Sheila Riggs played a pivotal role in shaping GBMC’s course, serving on the Finance, Strategic Planning, Legislative, and Performance Improvement Committees. She was instrumental in establishing GBMC’s Harvey Institute for Human Genetics. The program was the first of its kind in a community hospital and remains a cornerstone of GBMC’s commitment to advancing genetic medicine.  

Her work in Performance Improvement led to substantial enhancement of several GBMC programs, including radiation oncology, prompting the Board to name the center in her honor as a gesture of gratitude in 1985. She invested in the redesign of the Sheila K. Riggs Radiation Oncology Center with a gift this year.

Her contributions benefited patients far beyond GBMC. In the early 1980s, Mrs. Riggs chaired the MHA’s Long Range Planning Task Force, Target Tomorrow, which led to the establishment of the Quality Indicator Project. That project formed a basis for building quality assessment tools across medical specialties and had worldwide hospital participation before it was sold, years later, to Press Ganey. The team began by asking, "Are we doing the right things, and are we doing them to a high standard?"  

In one year, 1983, in addition to chairing the GBMC Board, Mrs. Riggs’ service in health care included membership on the Maryland Heath and Higher Educational Facilities Authority, the Advisory Council to the Department of Human Resources, and serving as the elected Secretary to the Maryland Hospital Education Institute, as well as chairing the State’s Task Force on Aging.  

In 1988, Mrs. Riggs was named to the Maryland Health and Higher Educational Facilities Authority where, during her 39 years of service, 20 as chairman, she oversaw the issuance of billions in revenue bonds to fund hospital and healthcare facility expansions. Her commitment to civic engagement has earned her numerous accolades, including the MHA’s Distinguished Service Award and a Congressional Certificate of Merit.  

Her service to Marylanders is not limited to healthcare, either. In 1982 Sheila Riggs was the first woman elected to the Board of Provident Bank of Maryland (now M&T). She also co-chaired the Maryland Council of Foreign Affairs and served from 1984 and then for the next 40 years on the Board of the Maryland Institute College of Art, chairing it from 1985 to 1990.