St. Luke’s Celebrates FitOne and Community Health

At St. Luke’s, we don’t just talk about transforming health care; we walk the talk. We’re taking steps to improve the health of the people we serve. We celebrate health at all levels and stages, whether you’re new to fitness or an Olympian.  What do walk, steps, celebrate, and Olympians have to do with transforming [...]

Continue Reading...

Six Care Basics for National Women’s Health Week

This is National Women’s Health Week and I have asked one of our St. Luke’s physician leaders, Dr. Laura McGeorge, to be my guest blogger this week on some of the key health issues for women.  St. Luke’s wants Idaho to have the healthiest women of any state. Better health for women means a more [...]

Continue Reading...

Behold the Power of Pink! The Treasure Valley Races for the Cure

Treasure Valley residents walked, ran, and rolled by the hundreds Saturday, creating a sea of pink for the 15th annual Susan G. Komen Race for the Cure through Boise. Thousands of dollars were raised for breast cancer education and awareness programs, and breast cancer survivors got the hero treatment from families, friends, and the community.  St. Luke’s [...]

Continue Reading...

Troubling Distinction: Idaho’s Ranking When it Comes to Suicide

May is National Mental Health Awareness Month, and I’ve asked Dr. Leslie Nona, one of the talented and passionate internists and physician leaders with St. Luke’s Internal Medicine, to write about a critical health challenge of particular importance in our rural region. Her report follows.  I recently had the fortune of bumping into a colleague [...]

Continue Reading...

Saluting Nurses and Nurse Leaders During National Nurses Week

It is National Nurses Week, and I wanted to take a moment to recognize nurses everywhere for all that they do in so many different roles. Those who know me know that I am a tremendous supporter of nurses, and particularly supportive of Magnet hospitals because of what that designation means concerning the culture of [...]

Continue Reading...

Why I am Working to Transform Health Care

WARNING: Unbelievably cute picture alert! Those who know me know that my work is more than a job; I am driven to fix what is wrong with health care. I am going to show you three of the reasons for my passion and sense of urgency. Last weekend, I had the privilege of being the [...]

Continue Reading...

Qualis Awards Spotlight Great St. Luke’s Work

Two clinical improvement initiatives from St. Luke’s were recognized by Qualis Health, the well-known care management organization that oversees quality for the Medicare program in our region, at the state-wide Quality and Patient Safety Conference held in Boise on April 5.  These two projects were selected from numerous submissions and were among four chosen for [...]

Continue Reading...

St. Luke’s Heart: ‘We do great work here.’

Our improved metrics and transparency efforts are proving beneficial in all sorts of ways and all across St. Luke’s Health System. At St. Luke’s Heart, efforts to combine outcomes and other data for a first-ever report on our cardiac, thoracic, and vascular services prove what our talented physicians and staff members in those areas have [...]

Continue Reading...

St. Luke’s Spring Forum: Charting Our Course

In our continuing commitment to transparency, click here to watch a video of my 2013 Spring Forum for our employees, boards, and physicians.  I also want our community stakeholders to understand the journey we are on and the progress we have made. I presented this Forum 15 times across our System over a three-week period. [...]

Continue Reading...

The Obesity-Cancer Connection, and What Can be Done About It

Dr. Dan Zuckerman, whose writing appears below, is an outstanding oncologist and one of our outstanding physician leaders at St. Luke’s.  I was talking to him about my concerns about the epidemic of childhood obesity and my fear that we would be seeing unprecedented levels of hypertension, hyperlipidemia, arthritis, heart disease, stroke, and even cancer.  He [...]

Continue Reading...