After my first three months 
at Good Shepherd Health 
Care System, I could not be 
more impressed with what 
I have witnessed from our 
team. From working with our 
Board of Trustees, meeting 
with our volunteers, being 
part of morning clinical 
huddles with department 
leaders to attending many 

key meetings with our physicians, other providers, 
nurses and other clinical and administrative staff—
all working together as a cohesive team to provide 
outstanding patient care and to move our organization 
successfully forward in so many areas. After 27 years 
of working in healthcare for many organizations, 
it is truly a privilege to work with such exceptional 
healthcare professionals and I am really excited about 
the future of Good Shepherd.
Our organization now embarks on a new era after the 
pandemic. It is incumbent upon us to determine what 
we want to be as a health care system for the next 
7-10 years. Developing a good strategy is often first 
choosing what not to do and then prioritizing what we 
want to do. I am confident that we will determine our 
long-term strategy and priorities of work—establishing 
a vision of growth of the services provided at Good 
Shepherd that will allow us to support our community 
in every way possible. 
Over the last year, Team Good Shepherd showed its 
extensive clinical capabilities as a health system by 
providing high quality care to hundreds of thousands 

of patients across all of our inpatient and outpatient 
clinical areas. Our Emergency Department, inpatient 
areas and ancillary departments like the Laboratory, 
Pharmacy and Diagnostic Imaging are as busy as they 
have been in years, possibly ever. We have expanded 
our state-of-the-art Advanced Robotic Surgery 
program by adding two new surgeons, thus furthering 
our surgical presence as a surgical leader in Eastern 
Oregon. Good Shepherd has signed an agreement  
with Life Flight Network to have one of their air 
medical helicopters permanently based outside the 
Good Shepherd Emergency Department—ready to  
fly our patients requiring care not provided at  
Good Shepherd. 
We also meet the needs of the community in many 
other ways, furthering the Good Shepherd mission 
of “Improving the health of our community.” Some of 
the innovative ways we furthered our mission were 
awarding grants from our Good Shepherd Community 
Health Foundation in excess of $163,000 to 43 
organizations, supporting very worthy projects and 
services. We offered free flu shots at five community 
events, including one drive-thru event, totaling 
over 400 individuals vaccinated. And we hosted 14 
American Red Cross blood drives and performed 57 
car seat checks/installations.
We are very appreciative of the community support 
of Good Shepherd Health Care System, and we are 
proud to be the community hospital counted on by 
so many patients near and far. We will work diligently 
to continue to be the community hospital our 
communities deserve to have and find opportunities 
for growth to establish new and expanded services. 

From the President & CEO

Art Mathisen | President & CEO | Good Shepherd Health Care System

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