Jennie Edmundson's strategic plan includes focus on key service lines, nursing unit renovations, behavioral health partnership

This message from David Burd, president and CEO of Methodist Jennie Edmundson Hospital, is the third in a series of Leadership Updates that will profile the strategic plans for each of Methodist Health System’s clinical affiliates. 

Methodist Jennie Edmundson Hospital has been part of Methodist Health System for 30 years, but our history in Council Bluffs goes back to 1886. We have a very rich history within our community, western Iowa and the health system itself. We value being part of an exceptional organization while setting high expectations related to quality of care and meeting the needs of our region. 

A quick look at 2023

This past year was exciting and successful on many levels. Our leadership team was thrilled to share news of our partnership with Acadia Healthcare to build a new 96-bed behavioral health hospital in Council Bluffs. We received approval of our Certificate of Need application thanks to tremendous support from the health system, physicians, our employees and the community. 

We kept the momentum going by welcoming Nebraska Cancer Specialists to our campus, which significantly enhanced our oncology services. We continued to see strong growth across several service lines, including acute and behavioral health discharges, surgeries, emergency department visits, and outpatient imaging. Finally, we added a mobile CT scanner to our existing in-house scanner, which helped us significantly reduce patient wait time while increasing our imaging market share.

Construction for our new cardiovascular suite – which is a product of support from generous community members and employees – began in 2023 and concluded with its official opening on April 1, 2024. We are growing significantly and continue to make investments to improve our facilities and equipment in an effort to expand services and further support the patients and communities we serve. 

Planning for 2024-2026

One of the strengths of the health system is that we’re all aligned and interconnected. The Jennie executive team and the strategic planning team worked together to develop our draft plan. Draft initiatives and measures of success were discussed with our leadership team and medical staff with great feedback being received from both groups. The end result was a strong strategic plan that was approved by our board in late 2023.

Some strategic initiatives we’ll focus on include:

• Continue to grow across several service lines including cardiovascular, women and newborns, oncology and orthopedics. 
• Build upon our efforts locally and in our outreach communities to continue to offer quality care close to home, reinforcing that Jennie is the regional provider of choice for health care services. 
• Complete the renovation of our nursing units during 2024 and 2025 to improve patient care and experience.
• As part of our partnership with Acadia Healthcare, complete construction and successfully open Methodist Jennie Edmundson Behavioral Health. 

The bar has been set high

I truly believe that we succeed or fail as a team. This is true at our respective affiliates, but it’s also true as a health system. Our success at Jennie is dependent on the system’s success and vice versa. It’s only when we combine the expertise and resources at Jennie with those throughout the health system that we achieve greatness.

Everyone being engaged in achieving the strategic initiatives and overall goals is critical to our success as a health system. We all need to be going in the same direction to meet or exceed the high bar that we have set. From my perspective, we have the talent and resources to be as successful as we want to be. We are incredibly blessed to have such engaged and passionate providers and staff, and the sky is the limit on what we can accomplish!