62.4 F
San Diego
Wednesday, Mar 27, 2024
-Advertisement-

New CEO at SD Blood Bank

After a nationwide search, the San Diego Blood Bank has a new chief executive officer, and it’s a name that people familiar with the 72-year-old independent nonprofit know well.

Doug Morton, a Ramona resident who has been the interim CEO of the Blood Bank since last November, was tabbed on March 14 by the group’s board of directors to take the lead permanently.

Morton has more than 21 years with the San Diego Blood Bank, first joining as IT director in 2000. He was named chief operating officer in 2005.

During his time at the Blood Bank, the 1993 Point Loma Nazarene University grad has overseen the core operations of the organization, including blood and plasma collections, hospital services, information technology, nursing and community wellness, marketing and recruitment.

“One of things I love about this role is our mission and the people we work with,” Morton said. “I feel good about where we’re at. We have good opportunities to continue to grow and we have several good initiatives ahead.”

Morton, 53, said one of the initiatives will involve reaching out to younger people.

“The trend nationally is that donors are aging out,” he said. “The Baby Boomers who have been donating for years are actually starting to be the ones who need blood. They’re moving out of the pool (of donators) and we need a younger group to step in.”

Under Morton’s leadership, “San Diego Blood Bank has continued to see steady growth in collections, expanded community outreach and a strengthening of our hospital partnerships,” San Diego Blood Bank spokeswoman Claudine Van Gonka said.

New Beginnings

Morton takes over for David Wellis, who left the blood bank in November to become CEO of the for-profit Excellos, Inc., a contract development and manufacturing organization (CDMO) that supports the development of investigational cellular products and cell therapies. Excellos’ headquarters are located in the blood bank’s Gateway Center Avenue facility.

Morton said the San Diego Blood Bank, founded in 1950 and licensed by both the State of California Department of Health Services and by the Federal Food and Drug Administration, continues to evolve, looking toward precision blood donations, new therapies and research initiatives that will help advance healthcare.

“We want to be on the leading edge of healthcare and be there for our hospitals, continue to be responsive to what they need and staying up on current technology,” Morton said.

The blood bank is also ramping up its efforts in tangible ways, including opening new brick-and-mortar blood donation sites at Liberty Station in Point Loma and in Chula Vista at Terra Nova Plaza. The San Diego Blood Bank also recently welcomed donors to its Southern California Blood Bank fixed site in Irvine, a city in which it previously had only a mobile presence.

“We’re focusing on getting donors to those community sites,” Morton said. “We’re ultimately here for patients in our community.”

Despite the challenges of COVID-19 affecting staffing needs of its work force, supply chain drop-offs (that have included a dearth of blood collection tubes and blood collection bags) and hesitancy of people to donate blood because of perceived safety concerns, Morton said that the Blood Bank has been able to turn a profit the last two years, boosted mainly by government-reimbursed treatment plan called COVID-19 Convalescent Plasma.

The Blood Bank’s consolidated statement of activities for the year ending June 30, 2021 shows total revenue and support of about $57 million with operating expenses of just under $50 million. Nearly $4.5 million of the blood bank’s revenue came from the CCP.

“The last couple of years have actually been very good financially for the blood bank because the government got involved in CCP,” Morton said. “CCP is a treatment for COVID-19 before we had any other options. The government didn’t want to place the entire burden on hospitals so it established a reimbursement rate for us.”

CCP is plasma donated by those who have recovered from COVID-19 that has been found to help some patients fighting COVID-19 because of antibodies that were developed against the virus. For more than 100 years, convalescent plasma has been used to treat the Spanish Flu, Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome, Middle East Respiratory Syndrome and H1N1 Influenza.

San Diego Blood Bank Chief Medical Officer/Laboratory Director Dr. Mark Edmunds said that the San Diego Blood Bank continues to collect CCP but that the FDA has cut back on some of its allowable uses.

Morton said future revenues of the Blood Bank may not be as rosy as last year because it is ramping down collection of CCP for immunocompromised patients who are unable to tolerate other treatments because of the government changes.

Morton said, however, that the San Diego Blood Bank is “prepared to ramp up plasma collections in the unfortunate event that we get a spike in a new variant that evades the existing vaccines.”

Collaborative Spirit

Edmunds said Morton’s strong business sense does not take away from his collaborative spirit.

“He gets that ultimately the patients that we serve and our community that are the heart and soul of the San Diego Blood Bank,” said Edmunds. “Doug has been instrumental in the development of our infrastructure and organization growth, and he has a deep understanding of our operations and a solid track record of providing reliable hospital services. I am looking forward to working closely with Doug in his new position, working together on our mission and the establishment of a center of excellence at the leading edge of transfusion medicine.”

Morton said he is proud of the way the group has worked through the challenges of the pandemic, and credits “our amazing staff and our amazing community” in San Diego.

He said that the San Diego Blood Bank is pushing forward with new grass-roots efforts in individual communities and working hard to earn the trust of those who previously have been wary of donating.

San Diego Blood Bank

FOUNDED: 1950

CEO: Doug Morton

HEADQUARTERS: San Diego

BUSINESS: Nonprofit

REVENUE: $56.8 million in FY 2021

EMPLOYEES: 303 full time, 45 part time

WEBSITE: sandiegobloodbank.org

CONTACT: (619) 400-8251

NOTABLE: Every year, more than 150,000 units of blood provided by San Diego Blood Bank are transfused into patients throughout Southern California

-Advertisement-

Featured Articles

-Advertisement-
-Advertisement-

Related Articles

-Advertisement-
-Advertisement-
-Advertisement-