Thank you for a successful FY13

Dear Colleagues,
As one fiscal year ends and another begins, we want to take this opportunity to thank each of you for your hard work and commitment to excellence. Whatever your job title and wherever you work, your role in supporting the very best in patient care, education and biomedical discovery is what makes Johns Hopkins Medicine so special.

Together we experienced a lot of change and met many challenges over the past fiscal year. From navigating around construction detours on the East Baltimore campus to the ongoing implementation of Epic, our new electronic patient medical record, it's been an exciting year of adaptation and advancement.

We've seen tremendous medical breakthroughs. For example, we were thrilled by our nationally heralded double arm transplant in January. It not only improved the life of the patient, a 26-year-old infantryman who lost all four limbs in a 2009 roadside bomb attack in Iraq, but offers new hope to thousands of veteran and civilian amputees.

Equally exciting was the astonishing accomplishment of another clinical team last September. In a series of operations spanning 20 months, we developed an entirely new ear, grown from the patient's own tissue, that was implanted where the one she had lost to basal cell carcinoma had been removed. Part of her skull, also removed because of the cancer, was reconstructed as well.

These and other remarkable achievements represent the promise of medicine in action, as do the tremendous strides made by Johns Hopkins researchers this past fiscal year. For example, during a preliminary clinical trial in 2012, Johns Hopkins scientists discovered that partially matched bone marrow transplants can eliminate sickle cell disease in some patients. The transplants successfully eliminated sickle cell in 11 of the 17 patients in the study. Such discoveries make us all proud to be a part of the Johns Hopkins team.

In addition to achievements such as these in laboratories and clinics, fiscal year 2013 has been a year of growth and expansion. Sibley Memorial Hospital broke ground on a new 469,000 SF, all-private 200 bed hospital with an expanded Emergency Department, inpatient pharmacies, 50 postpartum rooms and an 18-bay special care nursery. The Johns Hopkins Breast Center added new locations at Johns Hopkins Bayview Medical Center and Howard County General Hospital, further allowing us to provide the right care in the right place at the right time. In another exciting development, All Children's Hospital is laying the groundwork for a new pediatric residency program that will commence in July 2014.

Overseas, the second class of students entered Perdana University Graduate School of Medicine, which we helped establish and operate as the first graduate school of medicine in Malaysia.  Johns Hopkins Medicine International extended for another 10 years its collaborative agreement with Fundación Santa Fe de Bogotá, one of Colombia's premier health institutions. Pacífico Salud, a consortium of Peruvian hospitals, laboratories and outpatient centers, has signed an agreement with us to improve the quality of care across its expansive health care system, and India-based Bharat Family Clinic signed a first-of-its-kind agreement with JHI to establish a large network of outpatient facilities. Through the creation of a new joint venture Johns Hopkins Medicine International and Saudi Aramco signed an agreement to strengthen the health care delivery system and establish population health strategies for the company's 350,000 employees, beneficiaries and retirees.

Here at home, our efforts to improve patient safety and quality recently received national recognition. Howard County General Hospital, Suburban Hospital, Sibley Memorial Hospital and The Johns Hopkins Hospital received the 2013 Excellence Award for Quality Improvement in Hospitals from the Delmarva Foundation for their improved performance in core measures, the standardized best practices reported annually to The Joint Commission and the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services. That award owes much to the world's best nursing staff who provide clinical expertise and compassion 24/7 to our patients. Your talent and dedication is an inspiration to us all.

Perhaps our greatest responsibility is the recruitment of top-quality faculty and staff—particularly when a successor is needed for a distinguished leader. We are delighted to have recruited Colonel James Ficke, M.D., an exceptional West Point graduate who now heads orthopaedics and rehabilitation at the Uniformed Health Services University's school of medicine, to be the new director of the Department of Orthopaedic Surgery and orthopedist-in-chief of The Johns Hopkins Hospital. He will join us in September.

We also are nearing completion of our effort to find a worthy successor to Harold Fox, longtime head of the Department of Gynecology and Obstetrics, and have begun nationwide searches for the successor to John Ulatowski as head of the Department of Anesthesiology and Critical Care Medicine, and Myron (Mike) Weisfeldt as director of the Department of Medicine and physician in chief of The Johns Hopkins Hospital.

In May, 279 members of the school of medicine's Class of 2013 graduated, of whom 115 were the first medical students to complete four years of the innovative Genes to Society curriculum. The graduates were told they need to be willing to take risks, and that if they're passionate about an idea that they believe will benefit their patients and/or communities, they should push for it until it's realized. This is the Johns Hopkins legacy, and we are grateful to each of you for doing this every day.

The same can be said for Johns Hopkins Medicine as we launch a new five-year strategic plan. It calls for unprecedented innovations in how we deliver health care, not only in Baltimore but throughout the world. With a focus on our people, biomedical discovery, patient- and family-centered care, education, integration and performance, we are ready to lead the change. 

Throughout this upcoming fiscal year, please join us as we work to strengthen our enterprise and to craft a new chapter in our long history of excellence.

Sincerely,

Paul B. Rothman, M.D.
Dean of the Medical Faculty
CEO, Johns Hopkins Medicine

Ronald R. Peterson
President
The Johns Hopkins Hospital and Health System