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Hot Springs Health board meeting

At the February 28 Hot Springs Health board meeting held in their conference room, CEO Scott Alwin gave his report and said that Laura Budd has accepted the position of Foundation Director/ Grant Writer. Budd will begin on April 10. Also, Tim Teson has accepted the Surgical Director position. 

Regarding Patient Experience, Alwin said that “On Feb. 13 and 14, Robert Grossman from Custom Learning Systems was on site to provide a Leadership Briefing Training, along with orientation for our Service Excellence Council and Service Excellence Advisors… Inpatient scores have seen a minor dip over the course of the year and outpatient results have slightly increased.”

Alwin said regarding Quality, “Readmission rates and Return to Emergency Department rates continue to be elevated above target, with ongoing emphasis needed in improvement.”

Regarding Finance, Alwin said there is “Ongoing monitoring of the Margin improvement plan with an extra focus on salaries and FTE Creep. Wyoming Flex Grant is offering HSH $25,000 towards the Service Excellence Initiative. And they are receiving $11,477 towards the cost of the Community Health Needs Assessment.”

Regarding Growth, Alwin said they are having conversations with Premier Bone and Joint about expanding Ortho services with Dr. Francisco’s departure. Additionally, they are currently working on Sleep Lab Accreditation. IT is preparing HSH to transition to complete electronic faxing solutions. Also, CERNER Integrated Medical Record (IMR) is continuing to progress, and issues and tickets are being resolved. Per Billings Clinic they are 95% caught up. Clinic integration is targeted to begin in April. 

Dr. Matson Mathey gave the medical staff report and said they opened up their visitation policies as Covid numbers have remained low and are more consistent with surrounding hospitals. There are no restrictions on visitors unless there is someone who is contagious, such as having Covid. For O.B., patients will have two support persons until two hours after delivery.

CFO Kevin Benson gave the financial report and said they have moved on to work on the budget calendar for the next year and they are going to expand the calendar timeframe. Benson added, “We’re looking this year to have a little more time to really get into the detail of the budget and specifically moving in the items from the margin improvement plan that will be able to be realized or implemented partway through next year.”

Benson also said, “We did receive a $42,000 grant that we paid for the equipment required for the Cerner implementation in the clinic. So we’re really pleased to be the recipient of that.”

Regarding accounts receivable, Benson said, “It seems like we have been making incremental improvement over the last three or four months.”

There were discussions in the meeting about the trials, tribulations, and successes of merging data systems and getting everyone, including the hospital and the clinics, on the same system. Hot Springs Health recently moved over to the Cerner information system. Alwin praised the finance team for handling some of the problems and halting them due to issues and then resolving the problems.

For the Quality report, Nana Landis said, “Our 30-day readmissions went up a little bit in January to 8.6%. That makes our 12-month rolling average through the end of January, 7.1%. And our year-to-date for the fiscal year is 8.9%. So we’re not meeting our goal. And unfortunately, our volumes to readmissions puts us over that 6.0% goal. It’s going to be a pretty steep goal. I’m not sure we’re going to meet it this year, but I think we will come in under 10%, which is good. And then for 72-hour returns to the E.R., they drastically dropped in January to 0.6%. That actually brought our 12-month rolling average to 3.0%. And our year-to-date for the fiscal year to 2.3%, which is less than our goal of 2.4%. So we’re doing good there.”

Landis also said their compliance committee is working on setting up standing reports that will be presented every month. 

In new business, Alwin wanted the board to save the date for the Wyoming Hospital Association Trustee Education Session in May. 

In old business, the board retreat was moved to April 21 and 22. 

 

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