NEWSLETTER  7-28-09

This week the club visited the BID-Needham hospital, as guest s of Dr. Jeff Liebman, former Needham Rotarian. We had approximately 21 club members, and 4 guests (Marilyn Goodman, Marilyn Shaughnessy and Thomas Gilet (who returned to France last night!) and Mark Nussman, visiting Rotarian from New Bedford.

We started in the hospitals conference room located in the former Newton Oriental Rug building, across the street from the Fire Department. Here there was a wonderful lunch of sandwich wraps, sodas, potato chips and cookies. Thank you Jeff!

Jeff started his presentation with a review of where the hospital was when he arrived, and where it is today and what is expected once the $30 million addition is completed in October.  Here are some stats:

BEFORE                                              AFTER

41 beds now                                      65-70 beds which all will be private. Will be able to be

                                                           Converted to multiples as needed.

88,000 sq ft                                       127,000 sq feet

2433 in patient visits 2002                3128 INP in 2008

70216 out patient visits                     113,369 in 2008

10,500 ER visits                                 15,000 ER Visits

76 Active MDs                                   200+ Active MDs

An active MD is one who spends full time at BIH-Needham

$1.4 m in assets                                 $ 65m in assets when completed

Lost over $11m over 5 years             Now making 3-5% annually

All in all, this is an amazing turn around. This hospital was just about out of business, but with the affiliation with Beth Israel Deaconess in Boston, it is much more capable of attracting top physicians and the patient load has grown as well.

BIH-Needham will never do extremely specialized procedures (i.e. liver transplants), but they have worked on expanding their service offerings and will continue to do so. What they can not do here (liver transplants) are done at BID-Boston. When one needs to be transported, they have a quick response ambulance service ready to go at any time. By the time one arrives at BID-Boston, their medical records from BIH-Needham have already arrived.

After the presentation, we were escorted across the street to tour the hospital. Here, several very knowledgeable Suffolk Construction managers gave us a tour of the new patient rooms, emergency rooms, and we got a very good overview of how it will all work. Very impressive!

Jeff had nothing but praise for Suffolk Construction who will have completed this building in 18 months from the first 'nail in the wall' to completion. They have every expectation the expansion will be finished on time.

Louise Condon pointed out the quality and quantity of the brickwork. She went on that we can each purchase 'bricks' to support the Hospital expansion.

We are most grateful to BIH-Needham for opening their doors and providing us with a very thorough visit. We look forward to returning once the expansion is open.

REMINDER: Next week is Brockton Rox baseball! No Tuesday noon meeting!!! Contact Ryan if you are planning to go the Brockton for the 6:05pm game.