Hospital board receives training

At the July 27 board meeting at Hot Springs Health, CEO Margie Molitor provided some training for the board from an online board education school called iProtean. Molitor and the board will continue their training at each month’s meeting and also offline.

For the growth pillar report, Molitor said that the landscaping is well underway and hopefully will be done by the end of this week. 

Molitor said they had a very successful survey from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission last week. They came to survey their new nuclear medical room, Molitor said, “they were very pleased and we passed with flying colors.” They also had an inspection last week for their laboratory, and that went well. 

Molitor said they are continuing to look for an orthopedic surgeon to complement Dr. Francisco who comes every other week.

New physician Dr. Nicole Jamieson starts on August 9. Molitor said, “We’re looking forward to that very much.” Dr. Stephen Asay starts on September 7. Molitor said Megan Olsen started on Monday, July 26. Dr. Geoffrey Kraemer DPM, the podiatrist, is an employee of Dr. Francisco and Fremont Orthopedics, and he will start doing a clinic in Thermopolis twice a month and hopefully operating once a month. Molitor continued to describe her search for other staffing as well.

In the medical staff report, Dr. Mattson Mathey said in the last med staff meeting they were applauding the future plans for increased badge access to the building. They were also anticipating problems if there were building access issues, especially on weekends and after hours. 

For OB Mathey said, “There is a pretty good discussion about the number of providers doing C-sections, and especially the idea of involving the new surgeon, Dr. Jamieson, in for training, because that’s not a competency usually covered by general surgical training residency programs, but in having a surgeon that’s interested in gaining that skill. And I think that it’s probably worthwhile for the med staff to support that goal. And sounds like it’ll be discussed further at the OB committee.”

For medical staff old business, Mathey said they continued some discussion about utilizing community resources for medication, prescription assistance for patients that are uninsured, namely the 340 B program. They hope with some improvements they will utilize that more.

For Title 25 patients, those who have psychiatric issues, Mathey said there is an interdisciplinary meeting upcoming in August potentially with hospital staff, law enforcement, counseling staff, and possibly even judicial representatives. They will continue the conversation on how to best approach the psychiatric hold and suicidal patients.

In new business for the medical staff, Mathey recognized their new resident physician, Megan Olsen, who arrived on Monday. Mathey said, “We’re all very excited to have her here.”

The medical staff passed the infection prevention plan, which allows them to continue surveilling and enforcing quality infection prevention throughout Hot Springs Health. Mathey said, “It’s a very applicable policy to consider with Covid and retrospective of the last year and a half, almost.”

They also had a brief discussion about scheduling and the completion of stress tests in the morning for the providers. This was spurred by the clinic, changing its base patient visit block from a 15 to a 20-minute time slot. Mathey thinks it will kind of improve accessibility as well as our availability for their patients. 

Mathey added, “The extra five minutes for a short same-day time slot can mean a whole lot. And it’ll also give us the flexibility to move patient visits up from 15-minute increments and instead have a 20, 30, or 40-minute time slot to be able to stratify the acuity and complexity of patients and how long we need to be spending with them. But it did bring up the ripple effect of taking away 10 minutes that would otherwise be allotted for that morning provider to complete a stress test. So I think there’s a pending intra department meeting about how we’re going to make sure we’re keeping our providers available for that first appointment being 8:20 a.m. instead of 8:30 a.m.”

In the quality report, Nina Landis said they finished the year at 77% for medication reconciliation. Next year they will focus on returns and readmissions, they are still working up what the numbers are going to be for their goal.

For the financial report Shelly Larson said for June and the final year to date, their days in accounts receivable were at 53.42. The days’ cash on hand increased to 183.68 days, which was up almost 14 days. Larson said, “That is due to the fact that we received a lump sum settlement of one point four million from CMS for the current year with our utilization.”

Larson added, “Grant funds did increase in June as well because of that lump sum adjustment. And then you can see the year-to-date operating income without the Covid grant funds. Just keep in mind that we’ve paid a lot of operating expenses and we’re able to utilize the Covid grant funds.”

For the people pillar report, Linda Veylupek commented their staffing is doing “fairly well”. However, she said that turnover is going to go up this year and it is an issue across the nation. 

In new business, the board voted to approve a new infection prevention plan provided by the medical staff.