Looking Ahead: A Message from Susan Walkama, LCSW, President and Chief Executive Officer
It’s been a remarkable year for Wheeler as we’ve honored our past 50 years and also accelerated growth that will carry us into the next 50.
Through our five decades, we’ve transformed from a vision of a center for children to delivering an array of services as diverse as everyone we serve. We treat issues from the common cold to chronic diseases like hypertension and diabetes. We help individuals and families recover from depression, anxiety, marital difficulties, and complex mental health and substance use disorders. We serve consumers with special needs, including autism spectrum disorder, anger management, opioid use, problem gambling, child and adolescent development issues, and special education needs.
Today, our more than 1,000 employees serve more than 90% of the state’s cities and towns, with over 100 different programs providing services to over 30,000 individuals each year.
Our success and growth was not a given; it happened because of visionary staff and leaders, sound operational planning and practices, and an innovative mindset that saw or drove trends, and then positioned us ahead of them.
If our past is proud, and our present adds to that a dynamic growth, what’s to come can only be described as visionary. We’ve already seen the benefits of our organizational transformation in the form of higher patient satisfaction, lower costs, more accessible health care, and better outcomes for everyone.
Both in the next few years and looking forward long-term, we will build on these strengths in every aspect of our work.
Our strategic vision moves us into the newest areas of health care. We will leverage state-of-the-art technology with time-honored best practices. We will seek partnerships with networks and organizations that advance our mission. We will expand our service continuum to meet pressing community needs. We will identify gaps in services, care, and access, and we will work to fill them. We will continue to be an employer of choice for a skilled, diverse workforce. And we will continue to position our whole organization as a leader in innovative, accessible, effective care.
Thank you for celebrating our 50th anniversary with us, and we look forward to an even better tomorrow.
Wheeler’s future is bright.
Susan Walkama, LCSW, President and Chief Executive Officer
December 31, 2018
