Hospital makes plans for community health survey

At the September 27 Hot Springs Health board meeting, in the growth report, CEO Scott Alwin said that in the first week of November their contract attorney Scott Shanker from Tennessee will be on-site to meet with providers, the executive team, and others to learn about their workflow. Also, Alwin said that “Brian Lee from Custom Learning System will be here providing what’s called ‘Ignite the Patient Experience.’ We are tapping into his resources to help with our overall patient experience.” Lee is a mentor of Alwin and he requested time with the providers, directors, and the executive team.

Alwin continued and said, “In the area of quality, I want to brag a little bit. The American College of Radiology Committee on Mammography Accreditation, ACR for short, passed our facility on our recent testing performance. And so, with our mammography, we passed all the surveys and certifications for that. Our team has done a good job of keeping up with the best practices and passed all of the requirements for our certification.”

Regarding growth, Alwin reported that they are working through their Community Health Needs Assessment (CHNA) and they have been working with Heath Tech on it. In mid-October, there will be survey information put out into the community to give feedback in terms of their perspective of needs and wants and health areas that need to be assessed. Alwin also said they are working with Public Health on this. The Independent Record will be following the progress of the CHNA and will provide updates as they become available.

Regarding the hospital grounds, Alwin said they are going through a site survey that will assess the needs for water drainage in relation to snow removal and will be working with East Thermopolis on this. They may have to install a gutter on the east side to help with the water flow from drainage in the parking lot. CFO Kevin Brenson said that they will be asking the Town of East Thermopolis for a variance on their parking regulation and this will be an action item at their next town council meeting.

Dr. Mattson Mathey provided the medical staff report and said that there is a transition of a chronic care management employee to a full-time Health Tech employee who is in the interim taking on those responsibilities. Mathey also said they have been doing some troubleshooting with some missed and delayed labs from the Billings Clinic and that he said he came up with a plan to address the matters.

Regarding board education, Chairman Bill Williams discussed their iProtein program and decided to create a schedule for the board members. CEO Scott Alwin also said that he spoke to a representative of iProtein to discuss what kind of programs they would want and that they need to find out what the board members are interested in. Alwin added that beginning with compliance modules would be “a very good starting point for us going into this next season.” 

Board member Melissa Johnson suggested that the training should help support the goals coming out of the different departments and work with the strategic plan. The other board members agreed with Johnson’s recommendation. 

Chairman Williams provided some feedback about the previous training videos he saw and said, “Everything I have seen is good. A lot of ideas.”

In the quality report, Nina Landis said that “30-day readmissions dropped a little bit to 5.3% for the month of August. So we are great on our goal there that brought our 12-month rolling average to 6.74%, which is still not quite where we want it. So we’re hoping to go down a little bit more. And then for 72-hour returns to the E.R., we increased a little to 3.4%. Which brought our total month rolling average to it stayed the same, 3.5%. So our goal there is 2.4%. So we need to do a little bit of room, a little bit of work to get better.”

Landis continued and said, “We talked in quality quite a bit about what we can do to make those numbers better. And one of the things we talked about is we have a lot of people that come back to the E.R. with kind of recurrent issues. We talked about how we can treat those people without running them through the E.R. We actually have a few now that we have standing orders for. If they come back with the same problem, our nurses can just treat them, and then they can go home and they don’t have to have the whole ER visit. That should help our numbers there.”

In the patient experience report, John Gibbel said he had some signage put up for their Basin clinic. Also, Gibbel said they climbed Monument Hill to shoot some footage and take pictures of one of their providers. They plan on shooting another Medical Minute as well. Additionally, they are continuing to advance their message for their OB care in Fremont County. 

Gibbel continued and said that they have been working on the marketing plan for those who need the community health needs assessment. 

In the financial report CFO Kevin Benson said, “At the meeting today was about our work on the strategic goal of improving the financial reporting, that we get out to our department managers, trying to get that information out there, to them on a more timely basis, and also then to educate them and help them to understand what it is that they’re seeing on these monthly reports. And then to have them report back to us any significant variances so that they begin to better understand what’s going on in their department financially and who’s getting it there as well. We started that process with a training session with managers and directors earlier this month, and I think it was well received and we’re going to continue that training, beginning reviewing their first quarter results starting tomorrow.”

Benson added, “We have been preparing for the last few months our year-end financial records. Our auditors will be here in person onsite next week to finish their second week of fieldwork.”

Additionally, Benson said he received an email from the State of Wyoming which was seeking any hospitals that would be interested in receiving a disproportionate share of payment. Benson explained, “That’s a payment that the hospital has not received in the past because disproportionate share means a hospital has a higher percentage of the Medicaid population, and therefore you qualify for an additional payment to recognize that Medicaid doesn’t pay very. We haven’t received it in the past because we didn’t qualify and have the utilization over the threshold. But this year they are just under that threshold of 5%. Apparently instead they were given by the federal government more money than what you see in the past. We kind of want to spread the wealth. So we’ll put in for that and that’s going to be paid out before the end of the year. I’ve no idea how much money that might be, but it’s a good thing.”

In new business, Verlene Luna gave a detailed report on the many staff changes and updates in care at the various clinics or departments of Hot Springs Health. Luna discussed schedules of shifts and different areas of care.

Luna also provided a multi-page spreadsheet that covers the information of review reports on individual providers, facility reports and a monthly roll by the provider, and a year-to-date report. Luna explained that providers are very interested to know what their patients are saying about their care.