Good morning everyone.
What a great day.
I'm Bill Smittcamp, chairman of the Board of Trustees
of Valley Children's Healthcare and Valley Children's Hospital.
I'm pleased to welcome you all here today
for a very exciting day and newsworthy history-making for this hospital.
As you can see in the backdrop behind me,
the Valley Children's logo has been joined by the U.S. News & World Report Best Children's Hospitals shield.
I am pleased to announce
that Valley Children's has been ranked by U.S. News & World Report
as one of the nation's best children's hospitals in neonatology.
As many of you know,
Valley Children's began as a dream of five young mothers
who had a vision to build a dedicated pediatric hospital in the Valley.
Our Valley.
Over the years, many members of the community have followed in their footsteps
to grow and nurture this vision into what it is today
as a dedicated pediatric healthcare network
that serves the needs from Bakersfield to Stockton and over to the coast.
I'm not sure that these young women, some 65 years ago,
really realized what they had started
but I know that today, they would be very proud of what we have accomplished.
As a board member for the last three decades,
I have seen and experienced first-hand
the miracles that occur here every day.
I have watched as physicians and staff bring new programs and services to our community.
so that children do not need to leave our Valley.
I have watched as they have participated in nationwide collaboratives
to make sure that we are doing all we can to make this hospital the best and safest in the country.
I have watched as they have tirelessly pursued our vision of becoming the nation's best children's hospital.
Now others have begun to recognize
such as U.S. News & World Report,
have recognized what we are doing here in the San Joaquin Valley.
On behalf of the Board of Trustees,
I would personally like to thank the neonatal team
and the entire organization for all that you have achieved these last years.
This is truly an important milestone in our history
and one that we all should be very proud of.
At this time I'd like to introduce Todd Suntrapak, our president and CEO,
so that he can explain what this really means to the children of this Valley.
Good morning, everybody.
This is such a humbling experience for me
and such a great privilege to be reminded
here this morning with all of you present
and many that aren't and can't fit in the room
what a phenomenal team we have here.
And it's my great, great -- lifelong, in fact -- priviliege
to be associated with all of you
and the team of doctors, and I don't want to leave anybody out this morning,
the team of doctors, nurses, clinical nurse specialists,
the neonatal transport team,
the dedicated pharmacy staff that are in the NICU,
the exceptional, and often not easily spotted, respiratory care practitioners that are in our NICU,
the patient care technicians that are part of this unit,
the entire team coming together to care for neonates,
and I just couldn't be more proud to be among you.
I really could not. This is such a great day.
We all know at Valley Children's that everyone here has one mission.
Everyday.
And that's to improve the health and wellbeing of children.
That's what guides us. That's what gets us to wake up very early in the morning or
or in the case of our exceptional night crew, to work all through the deep hours of the night
caring for children.
We don't do this -- none of you do, none of our team does --
Dr. Pietz and his crew, Dr. Vish for 45 years or more,
We don't do this for the recognition.
We don't do it for rankings.
None of you do.
That's not what it's about for us.
What it's about for us
is to live up to and fulfill a sacred trust
that is imparted to everybody here at Valley Children's every day
when a family brings their child to us for care.
That's why our team does the work that they do
and all feel very privileged to be engaged in this work and to make a difference.
As good as the U.S. News & World Report ranking feels,
what feels even better
is to see the recognition in the faces of these children on either side of me
and in the audience today and throughout this hospital
and see them grow
see them smile
see them grow after being cared for in our NICU
and then go out and have a great time and break their arm
or twist an ankle and come to Dr. Girardi and get fixed.
Because let's not forget that play is really the only work of children.
And for us to play a part
in starting a child's life and giving them the best chance to fulfill their future
and to work like crazy while they're a kid
meaning to play every day
and to experience all that life has to offer as a child
and then grow up to be a contributor in our great Valley.
There's no greater reward for us at Valley Children's.
We're very thankful that this Valley has trusted us
for coming on seven decades now
We are very pleased to receive this first of what I anticipate to be many
rankings by the U.S. News & World Report
but as I said, for us
the true reward is seeing the children of our Valley
grow, have happy, young lives
and then ultimately
be in a position to take care of all of us when we get old and need help.
So with all of that said,
and in closing,
I want to leave you with one statistic
Our NICU provides specialized, Level IV neonatal care
to over 1,500 fragile babies every year.
And that's a huge, huge number when we look at our peer group across the country.
These are some of the smallest, most critically ill babies in our state
And Dr. Pietz and his team, the full team
even with the challenges of dealing with kids that are so critically ill
our outcomes are easily among the best in the country
and this recognition by U.S. News & World Report is simply an affirmation of that.
So now, if you would, please give a warm welcome
and join me in welcoming Dr. Jeffrey Pietz,
our chief of newborn medicine here at Valley Children's.
Todd, thank you very much
And thank you for the detailed thanking that you did
because I don't think that I could have listed it
as well as you did.
This is a great moment for this unit and for this hospital.
For decades,
we have constantly
asked ourselves, how can we be better?
We've assembled a great team of clinicians
we've participated in national collaboratives to try to improve our outcome,
we've implemented cutting-edge treatment modalities.
There's data being released in the back of the hospital that will show you
some of our outcome statistics.
And if you look at those numbers
you'll see that in 2014, the last year that we had numbers,
our mortality rate was approximately one-fourth the national average.
Our complication rate was easily in the best quartile of those units reporting.
Comparing apples to apples.
These numbers are exciting to talk about
but how do we talk about these things in less mathematical terms?
If we talk about Tyson Matthew Perez
I don't think he made it today
Oh, there he is!
I will get through this.
Tyson is five years old.
His birth weight was
360 grams.
For those of you who are metrically challenged,
that's approximately eight-tenths of a pound
or to put it another way, he was the weight of approximately
the size of a medium-sized can of Coca-Cola.
At the time he was born
the literature reported
50 children with birth weights under 400 grams would survive.
Well, as you can see, Tyson is here.
He's a very dangerous preemie.
He practices martial arts with his dad.
And I could talk about lots of these stories.
There are so many, just in this room alone.
But I need to thank some people.
Many people have jobs.
And they work an entire lifetime, and at the end of their careers,
they wonder if they did anything worthwhile.
People who work here do not have that problem.
So I would like to thank our 14 neonatologists,
our neonatal nurse practitioners,
our more than 200 neonatal bedside nurses,
dozens of pediatric respiratory therapists,
our multidisciplinary care team.
But this recognition is not just about the NICU.
There are lots and lots of people
who come from outside the NICU who are within the Valley Children's family that contribute.
There are brain surgeons, there are heart surgeons, cardiologists,
endocrinologists, geneticists.
They are not technically in the NICU but they are very important to the function of this NICU.
And without all of you we would not be able to do what we have done.
I'm not a religious guy
but you're doing God's work.
And to quote Dr. Prochazka, who's said this many times,
this is a sacred place.
And now I'd like to introduce one of our moms
Mrs. Rawn
She is going to tell us about her thoughts about our NICU.
Good morning.
We're honored to be here on such a special day.
We will never truly be able to express the gratitude we have for the NICU team at Valley Children's Hospital.
My husband and I have been blessed with two beautiful little ones
who both spent time here being cared for by the NICU staff.
Shockingly, our son Maddox was born at 24 weeks and spent
five months in the NICU.
Being told and then thinking this would never happen again,
three years later, our daughter Raegan surprised us at 26 weeks
and spent three months in the NICU.
At one pound, 12 ounces
and two pounds, two ounces,
many of you know more than anyone just how terrifying that is.
From emergency surgeries, discussing DNRs,
to hugging nurses, doctors and staff on our last days,
and everything in between,
we've experienced many different emotions during our NICU journeys.
The doctors, nurses and staff will always hold a special place in our hearts.
For the combined 259 days in the NICU,
my husband and I were there every day.
The NICU staff became our family and support system.
Even though our son faces many challenges,
both of our babies are happy and full of energy
and we are very grateful.
We may not have been so lucky if it wasn't for the care at Valley Children's Hospital.
Knowing that an excellent hospital like Valley Children's is in our community is one thing.
Experiencing first-hand the compassion and excellent care that was given to our children
as well as my husband and I, makes us exponentially more grateful.
The nurses and doctors always made us feel like our kids were more than just patients.
They cried with us,
laughed with us,
and prayed with us,
and made the most difficult times in our lives a little easier to bear.
Thank you to our friends at Valley Children's Hospital for saving our children's lives
making it possible for us to be a happy family of four.
We are eternally grateful for each and every one of you.
Thank you.
There's just one final thank you I'd like to make
before we adjourn.
There are refreshments outside the conference center here.
But it's important to me that we all take a minute and
reflect on not just the accomplishments
of our team here,
as great as they are.
This recognition should really be celebrated by every community in this Valley.
Our neighbors, our friends,
our donors, our volunteers,
who work tirelessly here -- scores of them, in fact, over 500.
Wherever you go up and down the Valley
for close to 70 years now
there have been investments made by families in Valley Children's
that have catapulted us to the place we're at today
so that we can be here to care for all of our children
in a way that is clinically excellent
and almost unparalleled anywhere else in this country
So I want to thank all of the Valley's residents
and citizens for supporting Valley Children's these many years
and for the future decades to come.
I want to thank all of you for coming out
It's a fantastic morning, it's great to see you, thanks again, and have a wonderful rest of your week.