Meet Your Leaders: Delbert Adams

Delbert Adams, owner of Delbert Adams Construction Group and Sunnyfield's, has been a part of GBMC's volunteer leadership for eight years, serving on the Philanthropy Committee of the HealthCare Board of Directors as well as co-chairing GBMC's 50th anniversary gala alongside his wife, Gina. But his relationship with GBMC began as most do: the birth of his three children.

"It was a hospital that basically took care of all our kids growing up. It was our go-to hospital," Delbert said, which is why GBMC is grateful to have him leading our new Corporate Leadership Council. A diverse group of business owners and corporate managers, the CLC will meet with GBMC leadership to have open discussions about healthcare and the business community. This two-way learning and knowledge sharing will be crucial to building healthcare systems that are beneficial to both parties' main priority: you.

What was your motivation for wanting to be involved at GBMC?


I think there's a place for the community hospital. You can get very good care with very high-level doctors and staff that I think we as a community deserve to have.

I would also be remiss not to mention my strong relationship with someone I considered a dear friend, Dr. Peter Golueke. (Former chief of the Division of Vascular Surgery for GBMC, Dr. Golueke passed away in 2011.) Inspired by his lifetime commitment to GBMC, I feel, in some ways, I am continuing the legacy he started many years ago, just on another level.

What was attractive to you about leading the newly-formed Corporate Leadership Council? What do you feel you bring to the role as Chair?


Whenever you are participating in a committee or a board, you always try to find something you can do that will make a difference, something that can be measurable, something you can rally around and be energized by.

I think I bring a unifying leadership across different industries and some of the networking abilities I have to identify and work with different leaders within the marketplace. But I think part of it is energy, a passion to transfer information and knowledge. That's what energizes me.

What I'm excited about is the people and the companies in this initial group. It's diversified; some relatively small companies, small relatively large companies, companies of different ages, different employee bases, different geography bases. It's really a potpourri of a lot of different managerial styles, different types of companies, different ownership perspectives. I think that's exciting.

What we have to do from GBMC is to keep our ears open in these meetings to understand where are the pressure points. How can GBMC or the health systems solve them or react to them or improve them?

Why do you think it's important for business to be informed or involved in healthcare?


Quite frankly, corporate Baltimore needs to learn more about GBMC and needs to understand the benefits of a community hospital. We have a knowledge base we can share with corporate Baltimore. As you run a business – whether you manage a division for a very large company or you own your own business – healthcare, medical benefits, everything associated with medical care, becomes a huge part of your benefit package and your employees. The more you can learn, the more knowledge you can gain about what wellness packages might be, how the medical system works is huge.

The majority of people don't understand how Maryland differs from other states around the country relative to medical reimbursements, how the medical system works, how hospital systems work. I think the transfer of information from GBMC to corporate Baltimore will be hugely beneficial.

The one thing we have going for us is you can put your arms around GBMC and navigate through the process and navigate through the information much more so than you can with any of the other competing hospitals, the big medical systems that are out there. You can grab pieces of it, but to really understand the overall, global position of a hospital system, GBMC is probably the only candidate in Baltimore that you can do that with.

What is your vision for the Council?


I think it will be evolutionary because the first piece of it will be a knowledge gathering on both sides, and GBMC will gain some direct perspective from what corporate management and ownership believes to be important and prioritizes in their world. I think corporate leadership will gain more of an understanding of how a medical system works, how a wellness program or systems could eventually benefit their employees and drive their expense cost down – it's a long-term perspective.

I believe as we share ideas with all these different companies in one collective room, what comes out of that is starting to build a lobbying effort that might be able to make a difference in Annapolis, having a creative voice that may make a difference in setting systems in place at a state-wide level. If I have a vision of where it could be, long-term, it could be powerful enough to make a difference at the state level, but there has to be so much knowledge transfer before anything could effect change.