Congratulations to the St. Lukes Hospital Auxiliary and its President Jean Shumway for the successful opening of a new, enlarged and greatly improved St. Lukes Thrift Shop in downtown Tryon.

With help from our Volunteers and a number of Polk County High School students, the Thrift Shop is now located at 148 N. Trade St. After several months of renovations and physical improvements, the St. Lukes Thrift Shop experienced a smooth transition from one end of Trade Street to the other! The location may be different, but its purpose and mission to help support St. Lukes Hospital remain the same.

Id like to recognize Jean for her personal investment of time and energy in creating a pleasant place for volunteers to work and a beautiful showcase for bargain hunters to shop. But the real beneficiary of this hard work is St. Lukes Hospital and the community it serves.

For those who may not know, St. Lukes volunteers have operated a thrift shop, initially a consignment shop, for nearly 60 years, and the proceeds from thrift shop sales as well profits from the hospital-based gift shop are given back to the hospital to help support the purchase of new equipment or facility upgrades. As a 501(c)3, the auxiliary has contributed more than $2 million to the hospital through the years, annually giving more than $50,000.

Everyone associated with St. Lukes is very appreciative and extremely proud of the accomplishments of the St. Lukes auxiliary, and we congratulate them on another successful endeavor.

In addition to gifts and support from the auxiliary, St. Lukes Hospital is extremely fortunate to have received about $500,000 which has been spent to update the hospitals computer and networking capabilities.

The St. Lukes Hospital Foundation has been successful in attracting grants, gifts and federal funding to support our efforts to upgrade internal infrastructure as well as our ability to connect with our doctors offices on campus.

David Pearson, St. Lukes Hospitals information services director, has provided the expertise in moving us quickly from a very tenuous and fragile situation to one that has put us on the road to an electronic health records (EHR). In a relatively short time frame, the hospital has moved to wireless connectivity for bedside nursing, surgery scheduling through patient management software, document scanning and electronic signature capture, fiber connectivity for campus buildings, and one-call scheduling for outpatient services. In the future, we hope to offer guest wireless access for patients and families. Its remarkable how far weve come, and we have David and our foundation to thank for this success.

Other news Id like to share involves customer service and benchmarking. Thanks to our affiliation with Carolinas HealthCare System (CHS) of Charlotte, St. Lukes is able to compare a number of quality indicators with other facilities, and most recently St. Lukes was on top of the charts!

Our team in dietary services was recognized for reaching the highest percentage rating of excellent by patients who responded to a satisfaction survey during 4th quarter 2009. You should drop by the cafeteria and taste for yourself! Youll also see a giant trophy on display for this tremendous achievement!

Add to that awesome recognition, St. Lukes ranked 98.3 percent, the highest of 32 CHS facilities for providing quality care. And we also beat the other CHS facilities after 98.5 percent of our patients responded that they would recommend St. Lukes Hospital to their family and friends!

Now at the top, St. Lukes staff will continue to work hard to maintain that position and make sure we provide our hospital guests with exceptional care, close to home.

St. Lukes Hospital is a not for profit, acute care hospital affiliated with Carolinas Healthcare System of Charlotte, N.C., for specialized management expertise, experience with developing strong community-based clinical services, and participation in revenue and purchasing contracts. CHS is the largest healthcare system in the Carolinas and the third largest public system in the nation.