Paul Szmal: FLX Morning continues. It is 840. The sun is coming out and hopefully stays with us a while. A little on the chilly side though at 45. I'd like to welcome in Mary Sue Dean. She is from the Finger Lakes Health Foundation with UR Medicine and Finger Lakes Health and she's been a guest before on the program. Welcome back Mary Sue.
Mary Sue Dehn: Good morning. Thanks for having me.
Paul Szmal: Good to have you back and a chance to talk about the Finger Lakes Health Foundation and a bunch of other stuff that's related to that.
Let's start with the foundation itself. What is the Finger Lakes Health Foundation?
Mary Sue Dehn: The Finger Lakes Health Foundation is really the fundraising arm of the Finger Lakes Health System. Our entire reason for existence is to support the patient care activities that go on at the system. The two hospitals, Geneva General and Soldiers and Sailors Memorial Hospital in Panyan, as well as all of our practices, our four adult living centers, everything that happens within Finger Lakes Health. We are the non-profit as is the health system and frankly the reimbursement that we get for the care that we provide and the quality of care that we want to provide our patients doesn't begin to cover the cost of that care. So the foundation really exists to kind of try and bridge that gap.
Paul Szmal: How hard of a, how hard is it to do that? To bridge that gap?
Mary Sue Dehn: Yeah. Well it's a challenge and it will continue to be a challenge. Having said that we have a tremendous amount of support from the communities that we serve and we are so grateful for that.
Paul Szmal: How long has the foundation been in place?
Mary Sue Dehn: Well the foundation as it exists now, it was actually a combination of the foundations that existed as Finger Lakes Health became a system. Meaning there was the Soldiers and Sailors Memorial Hospital Foundation, Geneva General had a foundation and actually I think even, actually no those are the two big ones. There might have been another one. I've only been at the system for a year and a half so these are things that I'm learning.
Paul Szmal: Right.
Mary Sue Dehn: But it was a combination of those two foundations that created the Finger Lakes Health System Foundation, the Finger Lakes Health Foundation as we know it today. So it was kind of taking all these individual organizations combining them into one umbrella. And putting them together, right. And now today we are a single foundation, a single 501c3 non-profit fundraising foundation.
We have a, you know, some money that is set aside that is an endowment of sorts that supports what's going on and then in addition we try to raise funds for certain projects to really just help again bridge that gap between what we're reimbursed for our care and the care that we provide.
Paul Szmal: What kind of projects are we talking about?
Mary Sue Dehn: Well for this year, for instance, every year we designate an annual goal for the foundation to try and raise money. This year we have for our annual campaign two big projects ish. One at Geneva General Hospital which is we're helping to raise money for the installation of a new x-ray. It's not just the x-ray machine, right, it's the installation and all the technology that goes along with it.
Paul Szmal: Right, yeah, there's a lot of moving parts.
Mary Sue Dehn: Yeah, it's not, you like to think it's just a camera. It's more than the camera. Definitely more. And you know that when you go in to have one, right.
Paul Szmal: Right, oh yeah.
Mary Sue Dehn: And the digital x-rays, you know, they're getting better and better and you can see more and more and it's a diagnostic tool that we want to have the best possible most up-to-date machine available to serve our patients. It's the right thing to do.
Paul Szmal: Right.
Mary Sue Dehn: So that's what we're going to do at Geneva General. For instance, last year we helped support the purchase of a new CT scanner at the hospital. So, you know, every year we have, we look at where the needs are and what we can do at the foundation to try and support fulfilling those needs, filling those needs.
At Soldiers and Sailors Memorial Hospital, we have targeted a couple of projects in the emergency department. As I'm sure you've heard or there's been some discussion here and in other places, we are moving towards a new electronic health record platform. And you think, what does that have to do with equipment in the ED? Well, the answer is it actually has a lot to do with it because it's not just about the electronic health record. It's about, in this case, technology that supports the equipment. So in the ED at Soldiers and Sailors, we're helping to pay for new IV pumps.
When you go to the ED, what do they often do? You get hooked up to an IV, whether it's for fluids or medication.
Paul Szmal: Right.
Mary Sue Dehn: And all of the pumps that we use today are going to be swapped out for new ones, which work with this new electronic health platform, allowing for real-time monitoring, automatic dosing, all sorts of things that will enable our providers to be able to keep an eye on people in a better way. A definite step up from where you are now.
Paul Szmal: Right, exactly.
Mary Sue Dehn: So it's going to be, that's a whole scale change, right? And that's one of the things, as we adopt the new electronic health platform, electronic health record platform, there are going to be things like that, that we need and want to swap out, upgrade, what have you. So that's one of the things.
And then we're also helping to provide some more comfortable stretchers in the ED in Penan, that are both more comfortable for our patients, but also will make it a little easier for our staff to move people around and get them comfortably situated. So those are the kind of things that we do every year over year to support the system.
Paul Szmal: We're talking with Mary Sue Dean. She is of the Finger Lakes Health Foundation. We've talked about the what that the foundation does and the fact that it raises funds. Let's talk about the how and how those funds are raised.
Mary Sue Dehn: Well, we raise money in all different ways. It's funny, I say at our new employee orientation, I will take any donation that anybody wants to give us in any way, we'll make it possible. But we do it from a different number of different ways. For instance, we work with our auxiliaries. There are three auxiliaries that support what we do as well. That includes the Soldiers and Sailors Memorial Hospital Auxiliary.
For instance, right now they are doing through November, Soldiers and Sailors Memorial Hospital was named for returning troops, essentially from World War I. We celebrated the centennial of the hospital last year. Every year the auxiliary does an honor and remember, I want to say mini campaign where you as a anybody who lives in the area decides that they want to honor or remember their service member, friend, family member, community member, what have you. They can purchase, and I use that, I put it in air quotes that nobody can see except you. But you can get a star on the board. There's a board, actually a couple boards down at Soldiers and Sailors where you can honor your service member with having their name put on the honor and remember board. That's a little bit of a fundraiser for the hospital. It's $10 to do that. That's going to go through November, obviously, because of Veterans Day. That's one of the small things.
This past weekend, we had the inaugural and what I hope will be a first annual Pickleball for Health. That was an event that was co-sponsored by the foundation and the Friends of Geneva General, which is essentially our newly named, but it's the Geneva General Hospital Auxiliary. We had a successful non-rainy day. The Pickleball Courts at Geneva High School, it was a real community event. We had In a Pickle, which is a new indoor facility over in Canandaigua, came and did a clinic in the morning for our beginners. I think we've created some pickleball fanatics in the process, for better or worse. Then in the afternoon, we had a tournament that was coordinated by Lions Pickleball Club. We had a lot of great volunteers from the high school. It turned out to be just a really fun community day.
Like I said, I hope that it wasn't just about raising money. It was about making those connections and understanding the assets here in Geneva that are there. That Pickleball Court was a community effort with the district to get those done on the old tennis courts at the high school. Literally in the shadow of the hospital, which is right there, next to the football field. There was a lot of things that came together to make that a successful and fun day. I'm really grateful for everyone who came out and for the jump-starting our Friends of Geneva General as we move forward with that effort.
Then Taylor Brown Auxiliary, which is out and supports primarily all of the resident activities at Huntington in Waterloo, our adult living center. They had a golf tournament back in September and they raised $13,000. That will come through the foundation to then go back out to assist with paying for all the activities. They do a lot of fun things.
Paul Szmal: What's on the docket for the end of the year?
Mary Sue Dehn: At the end of the year, we focus a lot on touching base with our donors, touching base with the community to say, hey, if you're thinking at the end of the year as you work towards getting your taxes done and you're thinking about making those donations. November, as we know, as always we think about that, starts the season of giving. We hope that when people think about where they want to give, what is worth their time, effort, and money, that they think about the Finger Lakes Health Foundation and the services that are provided here.
Our goal at Finger Lakes Health is always to provide the best possible care we can as close to home. The affiliation, we're bringing providers in. We've expanded already this year between adding two new primary care practices and urgent care practice. We're expanding. We're growing. We've added providers. We've added specialties. We're going to continue to do that. So my hope is that when folks think about what's important, especially as we get towards the end of the year, that supporting local community-based health care is one of the things that they think about.
And if people want to donate, how do they go about doing that?
Mary Sue Dehn: There's any number of ways. You can send us a check to the Finger Lakes Health Foundation at 196 North Street, Geneva, 14456. Or you can go online to flhealth.org. There's a little icon halfway or a third of the way down the screen on the right-hand side that says giving, or I think it's make a donation. I can't remember what it says. One of those things. And you can do it online securely with a credit card. Very easy to do.
We also have a couple community folks who have run some fundraisers for us in January. My buddy Mike Rossetti, shout out to Mike wherever he is, hopefully he's listening. He did a dialysis fundraiser for us for our dialysis center last year at Sons and Daughters. Those are the kind of things that I personally adore because they're rooted in the community and they mean something to Mike, whose dad was a dialysis patient for a long time. He understands that having that care locally is worth supporting.
Paul Szmal: All right Mary Sue, I appreciate you coming in this morning. Thanks for sharing and filling us in on the work that the Finger Lakes Health Foundation does and let's hope for a banner end of the year giving season.
Mary Sue Dehn: Appreciate that Paul, I really do. It is 8 52 on FLX Morning.
