23 | Sky Ridge Medical Center
Congratulations to Peconic Bay Medical Center technological advances, and providing more skilled nursing, rehabilitation, and home health services. The Emergency Center expansion was planned for in the original design of the project. Peconic Bay already has a skilled nursing and rehabilitation facility as well as a home health agency. With the growing senior community, expanding residential services to include assisted living, senior housing with a medical model component and possibly a life-care community is necessary to continue meeting the residents’ needs. “Residential services with a medical service component is needed in our community and consistent with the mission of the medical center,” Mitchell said. He said some components of the hospital’s long-term plan can begin next year, while the life-care community is about two years away.
Sky Ridge Medical Center
Leading the transformation ...on your beautiful new state-of-the-art surgical pavillion!
Peconic Bay Medical Center has doubled in size over the last three years and employs more than 1,200 people, making it one of the largest non-municipal employers in the region. The hospital has doubled its revenue base and doubled its admission base in the past 10 years since Mitchell has been President
technology. Six months later, the hospital was given a 5-star rating — the highest available — in general surgery by HealthGrades, the leading independent healthcare ratings organization in the nation. And just one year later — in the Spring of 2010 — Peconic Bay acquired the da Vinci Surgical System, a breakthrough surgical technology offering an advanced category of minimally invasive surgery. A member of the East End Health Alliance, which also includes Eastern Long Island Hospital and Southampton Hospital, Peconic Bay is also affiliated with Stony Brook University Hospital and Stony Brook University School of Medicine. . In 2010, Peconic Bay began its first family practice residency and hopes to expand to a surgical residency program, partnering with the New York College of Osteopathic Medicine. This is the beginning of an evolution toward becoming a teaching hospital as well.
and CEO. Mitchell describes his style as “participatory management.” He attributes the facility’s success to looking at the needs of the community and involving all stakeholders. “The bottom line is with everyone working together, organizations can grow quickly. My role is to make sure stakeholders are involved and help everyone stay focused on the true vision of the organization,” Mitchell said. The leadership needs to recognize that he or she has invaluable resources at the board level, physician level, staff level and the community at large. “Everything we have done here has been based upon community and executed properly, and we’ve been
ganized around three initiatives: upgrading the Emer-
“In addition to full range of surgical procedures and births, we also have a three imaging centers strategically located in the community,” says Susan Hicks, Chief Operating Officer (COO). “Our largest service line is our Spine & Total Joint program. We’re on track to do about 1,500 spine surgeries this year and 1,000 total joint replacements. In fact, Sky Ridge performs more spine surgeries than any other hospital in Colorado.”
very successful in going through a total institution transformation. It’s amazing what an institution can accomplish under very difficult circumstances.” By Patricia Chaney
Looking ahead, Mitchell says the future will be or-
Poised on a 57-acre campus mid-way between Colorado’s two largest cities—Denver and Colorado Springs—Sky Ridge Medical Center was the first hospital to open in Douglas County, which had been one of the fastest growing counties in the country for more than a decade. Open just seven short years, Sky Ridge is a 186-bed full-service facility with 1000 employees and 1200 credentialed physicians representing nearly every specialty. Keeping pace with demand in the community, Sky Ridge will see more than 36,000 people through its Emergency Department and admit more than 12,000 in 2010.
As COO, Hicks is in charge of all program development and key hospital growth initiatives. Working with physicians and helping grow programs is her passion. “Our imaging centers, surgical services, cardiovascular services and the spine and total joint programs are all under my span of control,” she says. “In addition, I am working on very exciting new project – the expansion of our comprehensive breast cancer program.”
gency Center to a Level 2 trauma center, continuing
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