Hospital board discusses strategic goals and more

At the August 22 Hot Springs Health (HSH) board meeting, CEO Scott Alwin reported that Scott Bergman, CRNA has signed a contract accepting the position they offered him. Bergman will come on board in November as he is currently on an assignment. Alwin also said they will interview Dr. Kellan Klubben, who is their third-year resident. 

Alwin continued and said, “One of our strategic goals and priority areas was to distinguish ourselves as the employer of choice. And so one of the strategies that we conducted over the past year was we contracted with Whitney Mathey as a videographer, and she created a recruitment and retention video for us.” Alwin added details about the number of viewers and regions where people saw the video describing its success.

Alwin described a meeting he had with High Country Behavioral Health and said, “I met with the regional clinical director and a local certified mental health therapist worker, and basically just to try to find ways to actively improve our relationship with them. We’ve discussed in our strategic planning the need for, and our community health needs assessment identified, the need for enhanced behavioral health. So I reached out to our local resource just to start communications with them, and they are planning to put a task force together that will include Hot Springs Health’s membership along with resources around the entire community to talk about the entire process of how to kind of envelop a behavioral health patient and how to take care of them pre, post and prior to even coming to the hospital or during after and what resources and what the processes to build to get them the help that they need in a timely fashion.”

In the financial report, CFO Kevin Benson said they did not have the financial report ready for the board due to a change in the board’s meeting schedule, moving it a week earlier. However, Benson said, “What I can say is that we have a positive operating margin of $33,000 and a very bottom net income of $134,000. The results are good, but we probably couldn’t get there in time for this board meeting.”

Board member Aimee Kay asked about the transition of the Cerner billing program and how well it has been. Verlene Luna, Certified Professional Compliance Officer (CPCO), replied, “There’s a steep learning curve for collecting the right demographic and insurance information and insurance verification, that sort of thing up front. So we’ll be working on that. And then I think just some of the backlog billing itself. We’re almost caught up with some of that.”

Benson added “We’re going to be focusing on streamlining, fixing things that are being done at the registration process. …the benefit of everything being on Cerner is that you can get one bill that includes hospital and clinic activity instead of receiving [separate bills].”

John Gibbel gave the marketing report and said he had contributed to the creation of posters for the Hospital Foundation’s Golf Tournament. Gibbel also said that their Oasis team has been going through a transition where they will be meeting differently and that “we’ve had really successful mentoring programs and we’ve got five mentors now. The referral bonus program has been really well received.”

Gibbel also reported that HSH recently sponsored the Demolition Derby, the Shoshone Golf Tournament, Discovery Days, PRCA Rodeo, and the Rotary’s Turtle Trek. They are also in the middle of creating a new patient handbook.

Luna gave the growth report and said they are planning for Dr. Megan Olsen to come on board on October 1. Their Rural Training Track resident starts on August 28. Also, they made an offer to a chronic care manager who originally graduated from Basin and has 20 years of experience in a variety of areas and grant-related projects throughout her career. Luna also said they are expanding their program to include a psychiatric nurse practitioner. Luna said, “We think that that would just be a great benefit and also play to our community needs assessment as well.”

Luna continued and said they will resume their polypharmacy project. They have identified 70 patients to potentially participate. This program involved anyone who has ten or more medications or prescriptions. They will look for any opportunity to de-prescribe and the patient will meet with their primary care physician and discuss with subsequent appointments.

Luna also said they submitted a proposal for an onsite licensed clinical social worker.