Providence Hood River was recently honored with a bronze Telly award in the area of Employee Communciations, for a video produced in 2005 to focus employees' understanding of the "Simply the Best" culture embraced by the hospital and other Providence facilities in the Gorge.

The video, produced by Providence Marketing Coordinator Elizabeth Settje and John Hardham of Light Wave Productions, won the award at the recent 27th annual international Telly Awards competition. Settje created the outline and recruited fellow employees to participate. The program highlights Providence core values and features Hood River employees talking about their commitment, and Providence's, to excellence in service and patient care. "Everyone who spoke on the video, spoke from the heart," says Settje. "It is inspiring to know the people we work with truly embrace service excellence and want to make a difference for their patients and residents." The video is used for both internal and external marketing, speaker support, orientation and recruitment.

"Wherever we use it, we receive compliments on how well it is done," says Chief Executive James Arp. "We are pleased to have such a quality video program to help us get our message out."

Hardham, who founded Light Wave Communications in 1983, worked closely with Providence staff to produce "Simply the Best" on a limited budget and a short turn-around schedule. Light Wave Communications is a full service, independent media production company, serving clients throughout the Northwest. Programs are distributed on DVD and over the web. The company also won a bronze Telly this year for Scriptwriting of an Online Production, for an interactive web-based training program titled "Medication Use System Safety Training," produced for Portland's Oregon Health and Science University.

Founded in 1978, the Telly Awards is the premier award competition honoring outstanding local, regional and cable TV commercials and programs, video and film productions, and for the first time this year, productions created exclusively for online playback. The 27th Annual Telly Awards competition received over 12,000 entries from all 50 states and many other countries.