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Drs. Craig Kent and Melina Kibbe deserve great credit for extending the world-class work being done at UVa Health to the entire commonwealth
• DR. MIKE DACEY
• Daily Progress, Charlottesville, VA, Sep 25, 2024
DR. MIKE DACEY
Leadership requires vision, persistence, and, most of all, courage. I represent Riverside Health, which, over a year ago, worked with University of Virginia Health System leadership in developing a unique and innovative relationship that will change the lives and improve the health of thousands of people in Southeastern Virginia. This would not have been possible without the leadership, vision, and courage of the UVa Health team, especially their CEO, Dr. Craig Kent, and the Dean of the UVa School of Medicine, Dr. Melina Kibbe.
Riverside is a large, high-quality health system caring for hundreds of thousands of people each year at our five, soon to be six, hospitals and over 80 practice sites spread across southeastern Virginia. All totaled, we see over 2 million ambulatory visits, hospital admissions, emergency department encounters, and surgical procedures each year. Many of our patients come from communities that are poor and underserved in both urban and rural settings. We are a safety net for the health of hundreds of thousands of people who often suffer disproportionately from diseases such as cancer, heart disease, trauma, and violence.
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I first met Drs. Kent and Kibbe are part of an effort to bring the leading-edge medical research, medical education, and ultraspecialized care provided by academic medical centers such as UVa Health to the populations we serve. It was clear from the very first meeting that both Drs. Kent and Kibbe shared a vision and passion for bringing the benefits of things such as the groundbreaking research done at UVa Health to poor and underserved communities across the commonwealth. Likewise, we found a shared belief in the importance of delivering care of the highest quality in all programs we developed jointly. We presently have two combined clinical programs with UVa Health in cardiothoracic surgery and advanced radiosurgery to treat cancer, and we will develop many more in the years to come. We are also in the process of developing joint educational programs for physicians that will assist in meeting the growing challenge of the doctor shortage across the commonwealth. In all my discussions with the leaders of UVa Health, especially Drs. Kent and Kibbe, quality of care and excellence in education has always been their top priority. My belief is that this is driven by a tremendous sense of responsibility toward patients and by a heartfelt sense of pride in the reputation of UVa and all its accomplishments over the years. Developing complex relationships such as this one is not easy and took persistence, vision, and courage, and I observed those qualities directly and consistently in the UVa leadership team.
In the future, relationships akin to the one between UVa Health and Riverside will be essential to the success of both academic medical centers and community-based health systems and will ensure that the exponential increase in medical advancements truly benefits all parts of our society. Dr. Kent, Dr. Kibbe, and the entire UVa Health leadership team deserve great credit for extending the world-class work being done at UVa Health to the entire commonwealth.