Introducing St. Vincent Charity Medical Center

With completion of the transaction between the Sisters of Charity Health System and University Hospitals on Dec. 31, 2009, the Sisters of Charity Health System has regained 100 percent ownership and governance of St. Vincent Charity Hospital. With this strong commitment of the founding Sisters of Charity of St. Augustine to this 145-year-old institution, St. Vincent Charity Hospital today is reintroduced to the community as St. Vincent Charity Medical Center.

“St. Vincent Charity Medical Center is not just one place. It is a hospital in the Campus District with off-site facilities across Greater Cleveland, including locations in Solon, Brecksville, Church Square, Brookpark, Independence and the former St. Luke’s,” said Sister Judith Ann Karam, CSA, president and CEO of the Sisters of Charity Health System and St. Vincent Charity Medical Center.

“This modest change to our name also reflects the teaching role of the hospital, which includes training physicians, dentists, podiatrists and many other health care professionals for our community. This is further supported by our developing collaboration with Catholic Community Connection and also with our neighbors, Cleveland State University, Cuyahoga Community College and the Campus District,” said Karam. “Yet it also remains true to our mission as an urban, faith-based hospital and our continuing quest for the highest quality and patient-centered health care across our diverse service lines as well as our evolving role in promoting health and wellness.”

Not only has the organization name changed, but it has also adopted the radiant cross of its parent organization, the Sisters of Charity Health System. This new identity emphasizes St. Vincent Charity Medical Center’s faith-based component as a beacon of hope and an extension of the healing ministry of Jesus. It also more closely ties the hospital to the Sisters of Charity Health System family brand, which is comprised of five hospitals, three grant-making foundations, two eldercare facilities and a number of community outreach ministries in Northeast Ohio and South Carolina.

The name and logo change was implemented internally on Jan. 11. However, the launch became official last week with presentation of the HealthGrades Distinguished Hospital Award for Clinical ExcellenceTM and launch of a new advertising campaign celebrating this accomplishment and rebranding St. Vincent Charity Medical Center.

The rebranding campaign was an effort that began in June 2009 when the marketing department and creative partners, Twist Creative, convened a team of caregivers from across departments to help identify the strengths, weakness, challenges and opportunities present at St. Vincent. Over the course of several months and with the help of patient and employee satisfaction surveys and market research, the team developed brand positioning statements that reflect the personality, character and atmosphere at St. Vincent. The essence of the new brand is: Care you can believe in.

This new tagline reflects how St. Vincent Charity Medical Center delivers faith-based personalized health care. “As when the Sisters of Charity of St. Augustine founded St. Vincent in 1865, our renowned physicians, nurses and staff understand that true healing comes not only from advanced medical technology, but also from a warm, holistic, healing touch,” said Karam.

“We started from the premise that when you’re sick or injured your desire to get well is equal to your desire to be treated well,” said Wendy Hoke, director of marketing and communications at St. Vincent Charity Medical Center. “Our current advertising campaign reflects how our patients find comfort and confidence in an approach to health care worth believing in through the excellent care provided by our physicians and caregivers,” said Hoke.

Completing the new branding is the launch of a new, interactive and highly functional Web site that has reinforced the focus on delivering the best in clinical excellence. Additionally, St. Vincent Charity Medical Center has launched a social media strategy that includes Facebook, Twitter and YouTube.

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About St. Vincent Charity Medical Center
St. Vincent Charity Medical Center is Cleveland’s faith-based, high-quality healthcare provider. Our distinguished doctors and caregivers are devoted to treating every patient with clinical excellence and compassionate care. St. Vincent Charity Medical Center is home to the renowned Spine and Orthopedic Institute and the Center for Bariatric Surgery. Owned by the Sisters of Charity Health System, St. Vincent Charity Medical Center delivers health care you can believe in. The Sisters of Charity Health System is a family of hospitals, grant-making foundations, elder care and outreach organizations devoted to healing individual, families and communities. For more information, visit http://www.stvincentcharity.com/.

Voices of the Uninsured Forum is tomorrow

Who are the uninsured persons in Greater Cleveland? We'll hear firsthand tomorrow at the "Voices of the Uninsured Forum" beginning at 8:30 a.m. at The Intercontinental Hotel on the Cleveland Clinic campus as 250 people gather for a frank discussion.

This important event brings together uninsured persons and medical respresentatives from all four health systems (yes, there are four)--Cleveland Clinic, MetroHealth, Sisters of Charity Health System and University Hospitals. Participants also include staff from Neighborhood Family Practice and The Free Clinic. Planning included particpation of UHCAN Ohio, Community Advocate, NEON, Cleveland Jobs with Justice, Ohio Association for Community Health Center and the May Dugan Center.

Free and open to the public, this forum explores the challenges and opportunities in access to health care in Greater Cleveland, health care reform efforts, facts and myths about Medicaid and the biennial state budget implications on Medicaid and the importance of finding a "medical home."

Keynote speaker is Cincinnati City Councilman John Cranley who lead the efforts on CincyCare, a pilot program to provide low-cost health care to residents who live and work in the city, don't qualify for government health care programs and who lack employer-sponsored health care.

This event is sponsored by We Are the Uninsured, which is funded by the Sisters of Charity Foundation of Cleveland, and Neighborhood Family Practice.

Jay Rosen asks Romenesko readers...

"If the McCain campaign says the [New York] Times is not a legitimate news source why does the Times have to treat McCain as a legitimate candidate?"

What do you think?

In case you missed it, this question stems from a Times article about McCain campaign adviser Rick Davis's ties to Fannie and Freddie and his and Steve Schmidt's reaction in a conference call with reporters calling the Times an illegitimate news source that's "in the tank" for Sen. Obama.

Watch the YouTube audio of the conference call here.

This campaign is rapidly spinning into never-before-seen levels of ridiculousness that are an insult to the American people. Do we have any hope of seeing a frank, intelligent discussion about issues at Friday's debate? Wake me up when it's over.

Connie on Poynter

Poynter has a great audio interview with PD columnist Connie Schultz. Nice job, Connie! Two of her columns are published in this year's "Best Newspaper Writing 2008-09," by the American Society of Newspaper Editors. She has a gift for sharing her thoughts on writing, whether it's to a group of senior citizens or an addled fearful fellow female journalist.

Straight talk on McCain's presidential ambition

From opinion piece in Politico by Elizabeth Drew, author of complimentary biographer, "Citizen McCain."

In his 2002 memoir, “Worth the Fighting For,” he wrote, revealingly, “I didn’t decide to run for president to start a national crusade for the political reforms I believed in or to run a campaign as if it were some grand act of patriotism. In truth, I wanted to be president because it had become my ambition to be president. . . . In truth, I’d had the ambition for a long time.” (bold is mine)

...

There’s a certain lack of seriousness in him. And he does not appear to be a reflective man, or very interested in domestic issues. One cannot imagine him ruminating late into the night about, say, how to educate and train Americans for the new global and technological challenges.

McCain’s making a big issue of “earmarks” and citing entertaining examples of ridiculous-sounding ones, circumvents discussion of the larger issues of the allocation of funds in the federal budget: according to the Office of Management and Budget, earmarks represent less than one percent of federal spending.

...

Campaigns matter. If he means “shaking up the system” … opposing earmarks doesn’t cut it.

McCain’s recent conduct of his campaign – his willingness to lie repeatedly (including in his acceptance speech) and to play Russian roulette with the vice-presidency, in order to fulfill his long-held ambition – has reinforced my earlier, and growing, sense that John McCain is not a principled man.
In fact, it’s not clear who he is."

UPDATED: KSU Poynter ethics seminar today

Jill is reporting today from the KSU Poynter Media Ethics seminar. Wanted to be there but couldn't swing the $50 price tag just now.

There's also a twitter feed here.

UPDATE #1: Jay Rosen is keynote today at KSU. Hope he shakes things up a bit. Keep hearing words like "timid" and "risk-averse" in describing journalism today. Certainly those are not words I ever would have associated with being a journalist.

So far seems to be a very one-sided conversation with a lot of traditional journalism angst and hand-wringing. Where are the bloggers in this workshop????

Hoping Jay Rosen can shake them out of their collective malaise. Read Jay's PressThink post today for preview/outline of his remarks.

Damn! Wish I was there.

UPDATE #2: Oy! They just don't get this. Blogging is a conversation about transparency, it's not a hierarchical top-down form of communication. It's two-way, interactive. So while traditional journalists fret about objectivity and proper filters, they are missing how transparency and the ethics of linkage perform that function for blogging.

Jay Rosen's keynote is up next. Hoping for a little common sense.

Sons and daughters of the news media...

... War has been declared on us by a hostile aggressor intent on stealing whatever piddly credibility we may yet hold with the public. Are we to run, then? Or are we to stand and fight? Will Bunch has written the journalistic equivalent of the William Wallace speech.

"Because there is a war for the soul of this nation going right now, and we the media are involved -- not as some would like to think, as some kind of passive UN peacekeeping force -- but as a party that is in the acrid smoke of combat, under attack in a manner that's little different from the way that parts of Georgia were overrun by the Russian Army a few weeks ago. And frankly, American newsrooms face a situation that could be described in similar terms to that former Soviet Republic -- nearly defeated, and demoralized, with few if any allies that are willing to come to our aid. And despite the dire situation, most journalists are cruising along toward Nov. 4 as if it's business as usual, and that is what I personally find most alarming."

...

Remember, they declared war on us for the same reason that anyone declares war: Because they perceive us as weak. And why wouldn't they? Newspapers have gone from cash cows to an ink-stained version of Lehman Brothers in a couple of short years; there are fewer reporters on the campaign trail and fewer reporters at the conventions (it didn't look that way from afar, but my paper, the Daily News, has gone from four to three to two to one reporter since 1996. There are fewer reporters in Washington and, regarding a major issue in the 2008 race, fewer reporters giving a true picture of what's going on Iraq.

At the same time, consider the run-up to Iraq as the war games where the current tactics were proved so effective -- the time when we showed it was more important to let one side, the White House, set the narrative, and tried feebly to balance it with a response way down in the story, rather than trying to investigate what was the truth about Iraq's ties to al-Qaeda or weapons of mass destruction. They know that we can be crushed with our own antiquated rules -- established in a different era, when the Internet didn't exist and when newspapers had a different, monopoly role, and when politics...well, OK, I know it wasn't beanbag, but it wasn't quite the bloodsport it is today, I believe."

So what is our call to arms? Bunch encourages us to use our time-tasted battle arsenal, but also to use the weapons of modern reporting warfare between now and November 4—and beyond.

1) Make fact-checking our number one priority in reporting.

2) Don't be afraid to call a spade a spade and a lie a lie.

3) Don't be compelled to cover either candidates' video press releases as if they were news. Ditto for their families—the good and the bad. If they are deemed off limits, then let it be so.

4) Make truth-telling fun and lively. Think: "Freedom's just another word for nothing left to lose."

We may lose our livelihood as we know it, but they can't take away our freedom to report! Bloggers, journalists, citizen journalists, editors, freelancers and pundits—UNITE against the tyranny of campaign lies!

Some Tweets on Palin

I am addicted to Twitter. During Obama's acceptance speech at the DNC, I sat in my family room with my laptop and joined a collection of followers and followees in a shared viewing experience. Son #1 sat next me and said, "So is this like texting for adults."

Yeah, I guess it is, only you're not texting one individual, you're talking to a group of people. While there may be some shared followers, no two Twitterers share the same conversation.

Increasingly, I find myself using it as a place for mini-posts that replace regular longer posts here on Creative Ink. Call me lazy, but sometimes it's just easier to post a pithy 140-character thought than to carve out the time for something longer here. I'm striving for better balance.

Today, I've been reading about Charles Gibson's interview with Gov. Sarah Pallin. Here are the tweets based on what I've read this morning:

In response to WAPO article in which Jill Zimon is quoted about how Palin manages home/family/work:
@Jillmz Nice! Article is interesting and begging for a blog post. WHY do we have to bring up mommy wars????? about 4 hours ago from web in reply to Jillmz

Retweeting item by Tracy Zollinger:
Retweeting @tinymantras Wondering if Sarah Palin will be interviewed by any female journalists before the election. about 4 hours ago from web

My musing after reading several stories about how Obama campaign needs to get back on message:
Paging Aaron Sorkin: We need an Andrew Shepard moment to refocus campaigns on what really matters. about 3 hours ago from web

Response to Paul Krugman's piece Blizzard of Lies:
Krugman: "how a politician campaigns tells you a lot about how he or she would govern." http://is.gd/2wW5 about 2 hours ago from web

Reflecting on Obama's two-hour lunch with Bill Clinton:
What would Bill do? Politico takes a crack: http://is.gd/2wSo about 2 hours ago from web

Joan Walsh thinks McCain/Palin making mockery of 9/11:
"There is a constituency of people who want their president...to be just as clueless and uninformed as they are." http://is.gd/2x9W about 1 hour ago from web

Finally, this morning, the review from Atlantic's James Fallow's in China:
James Fallows on what Sarah Pallin didn't know: http://is.gd/2x8D. Reason? She was not interested enough.

Join the Monitor in real-time reporting on "Little Bill Clinton"

Here's another reason why I'm so proud to be a contributor to the Christian Science Monitor. Last night I received an e-mail from my editor about a new project called, "Little Bill Clinton: A School Year in the Life of a New American" by reporter Mary Wittenberg and photographer Melanie Stetson-Freeman.

According to the editor: "This year-long narrative project about a refugee charter school in Atlanta, the International Community School. The face of the project will be Congolese third-grader Bill Clinton Hadam – but it will also include story threads from refugees from 35 countries."

I'm thrilled to see that this kind of unconventional, in-depth reporting is taking place and would jump at the chance to be involved in such a project here. 

Cuyahoga County: What's next?

There's a certain thrill to watching the unraveling of the Cuyahoga County political patronage machine. We (Dan and I) spent the evening speculating with neighbors about how deep the deception lies, what the FBI and IRS are searching for, when (if?) charges will be filed, how long this has been going on and who will benefit.

Today's PD is reporting that D-A-S Construction CEO Steve Pumper is singing. Russo's attorney, Richard Lillie, claims there was no quid pro quo. But as Valdis Krebs has shown here and here, there are ways around direct quid pro quo.

The question percolating in my mind today, in addition to when will we learn more, is what kind of long-term impact this will have on important county services that residents depend on—MetroHealth Medical Center, Board of Mental Retardation/Developmental Disability, Children and Family Services and Support Enforcement Agency. Cuyahoga County residents, dwindling in numbers, are not going to support tax increases without some serious changes in how government is delivered and held accountable.

Yesterday's reporting focused primarily on the scope of the search warrants executed. Now it's time to look deeper into the fallout from this public corruption.

The Sound of Ideas will be discussing shortly.

FBI/IRS raid county admin

Big stuff breaking at Cuyahoga County Admin building. I'll be following this story closely.

Operation Halyard story is a must-see

My good friend and Toledo television reporter, Jennifer Boresz reported a wonderful feature-length piece that aired on July 4 on WTOL, the CBS affiliate in Toledo. It's hard for local broadcasters to get meaty assignments, but Jen put a great deal of work into this piece that aired on the station's 5 o'clock show. Hope you'll take a minute (or five) to watch.

I've been a friend and mentor of Jen's since she was a student at Cleveland State University five years ago so I'm very proud of her work. Keep pushing to do the stories that feed your soul, Jen!

Monday odds and ends

I'm trying to keep my Mondays and Fridays as "office" days so I can sift through the myriad items requiring constant follow up. I spent the weekend proofing pages for a book project so my tired eyeballs could really use a break.

In addition to following up with folks I haven't seen in a while (thanks to the SPJ DSA), I'm also going through my reviewer checklists for fall titles from publishers, getting my writer's group submission together and setting up interviews for upcoming story assignments. Once the mail arrives, I'm also hoping to update my May receivables.

Meanwhile, I found an interesting contradiction in today's Plain Dealer that I thought I'd toss out for your reading and commenting pleasure. Did you happen to see the full-page ad on the back of the A-section for St. Martin de Porres High School? The ad states that every one of the 50 seniors of this private school for those of modest means was accepted into at least one college or university. Cool, huh?

There's no story in the paper on this school, but there IS a cover Arts & Life story on idol nonsense. Are you kidding? It's not as if "American Idol" is some new phenomenon sweeping the nation. It's a tired TV show with sinking viewership. WHY give valuable editorial space to Idol when the achievements of students at an alternative inner-city school are reduced to having sponsors (Forest City) buy ads for them?

If Idol is deemed such a cool story by the editors, throw it up on the web, where the cool "Idol" fans are anyway. I highly doubt they are reading the print version of the paper.

A new kind of urban school, committed to transforming students and preparing them for college deserves better than an ad.

This Catholic college-prep school is not run by the Diocese of Cleveland, but is one of 19 schools across the country in the Cristo Rey Network. Check out the 60 Minutes video about Cristo Rey in Chicago and tell me if you could get through the last 30 seconds without tears. Students, some of whom lack supportive home environments, are in school four days a week for a longer period of time during the day and then work one day at local companies, such as Forest City and even The Plain Dealer!

It's founding supporters are: The Detroit Province of the Society of Jesus, The Sisters of the Humility of Mary, The Cassin Educational Initiative Foundation, and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.

I spoke with Kim Mantia, associate director of advancement for St. Martin de Porres, who tells me that she scheduled a college signing day with the top 11 students in the class of 2008 (the school's first graduating seniors) and no one from media showed. Now if this involved athletic scholarships, you can bet the city's sportswriters would be there.

A PD photographer who was covering the school during its first year in 2004 did come and he admitted it had been a while since he saw the students (as freshmen), when the paper was committed to observing and writing about its efforts. I certainly hope the PD plans to follow up because if you have any inkling of how difficult education reform is, you'll realize that success of this kind is truly inspirational and contagious.

Regardless of what they do, I plan to write about St. Martin de Porres because I happen to know a little something about education reform efforts. And the school's success is a BIG deal.

Word of the day
dichotomy: a division into two especially mutually exclusive or contradictory groups or entities

Breaking news: Spitzer involved in prostitution ring

This is breaking right now from New York Times. A statement from New York Gov. Eliot Spitzer is expected shortly.