Eastern Adams County's Only Independent Voice Since 1887
Eastern Adams County's Only Independent Voice Since 1887
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As we wrap up a year and, indeed, a decade, it’s a good idea to take a little inventory. As to things done, there’s a lot of good news. We have more primary-care providers, enough so that prompt appointments, even same-day appointments, are now not an issue. We are, with the assistance of specialized experts, making major inroads into the backlog of billings, and into assuring timely and accurate billings to patients. We have a fine physical facility. We have a first-class dentist with appointments available and dental ful...
As you probably know by now, we have a new CEO at the District, Mr. Corey Fedie. This paper will be telling you about Corey, but I will say that he has made a great first impression with everyone, and is brimming over with the ideas and enthusiasm that made him the Board’s choice. We have not lost touch with our CEO of seven years, Gary Bostrom, who remains with the District in the capacity of Chief Financial Officer, working off-site (a common arrangement for smaller Districts). This is, I feel, a good time to reflect on h...
The exciting news is that your District has settled on a new Chief Executive Officer to take over from retiring CEO Gary Bostrom. The new CEO is Mr. Corey Fedie. He comes to us from the Kit Carson County Health Service District in Burlington, Colorado, which, like us, is a Critical Access Hospital with a 24/7 Emergency Department. Corey was the finalist in what was a grueling selection process, for we were fortunate enough to have several highly qualified applicants. Corey will formally begin his duties on June 10th, giving...
The good news is that it looks like your District will have ended 2018 with a six-digit profit. We have to say “looks like” because the final audit adjustments are not completed, but that seems to be what the number will end up being. That is great news, because a number of other Public Hospital Districts similar to ours are still losing money. That takes us to the less-than-good news. The state Health Care Authority continues to press their proposed new “Alternate Payment Model,” which would drastically change how about half...
As the year draws to a close, here are some odds and ends of updates on District business. In late November, the District held a Strategic-Planning session. Normally, such sessions try to lay out goals, and strategies to meet those goals, for a multi-year period, but this time the focus was more short-term—a year or two—because we will be welcoming a new CEO in mid- 2019, as Gary retires then. The planning was thus left flexible enough so that whoever the next CEO is will be able to put his or her impress on the lon...
Your Hospital District is but one of a number of organizations in east Adams County that are concerned, to one degree or another, with health care. Few if any of those organizations have the kind of budget that similar organizations in non-rural areas of the state have, and so any sort of extra funding support they can get is always profoundly helpful. For over thirty-five years, the East Adams County Healthcare Foundation, an all-volunteer group, has put in yeoman work in raising funds for distribution to the various... Full story
To plan where you’re going, you need to remember where you’ve been. It’s worth looking back a bit every now and then. Your District has accomplished quite a lot over the past few years. First and foremost, in 2014 it averted forced closure by the state and the feds over major problems with the physical plant. When the District’s first bond measure failed, the facility was promptly red-tagged and closure was a matter of weeks off. Fortunately, through a sort of loophole in state law, we were able to use a no-bid process for so... Full story
Your District has always sought to be your “medical home”, a one-stop portal to all the healthcare services you need. That does not mean that we here can provide every service you might need: we cannot, for example, perform brain surgery. But, like all rural healthcare facilities, we do try to offer at least initial access to most or all of the various medical specialties you are likely to need. We do that, or try to, by having a spectrum of medical specialists make periodic visits to our facility, where they can see pat...
The big news of the month, which you probably already have heard, is that the District has succeeded in selling the former Care Center property. What you may not have heard is that it looks as if the deal will be even better than originally thought. That is because the Care Center property actually comprises four distinct land parcels. The buyer’s original offer, as accepted by the District, was for one of those four parcels, the one with the facility structure on it. But the buyer, considering their plans for further expansi...
Coming up toward the end of this month is the annual Rural Hospital Leadership Conference, organized by the Washington State Hospital Association and the Association of Washington Public Hospital Districts. While these conferences are always densely packed with informative lectures and interactive sessions, this year may be especially important, because the Washington Rural Health Access Preservation (WRHAP) group hopes to make a presentation to some of the key state legislators on the House and Senate Committees dealing...
There is no single over-arching theme today, but rather a collection of bits and pieces of news, mostly good. First: the state Healthcare Authority did an audit of our Electronic Health Records payments, and found that they still owe us some $308,856.18. We don’t yet know exactly when and how we are to receive that money, but it should be fairly soon now that they have the data. When healthcare facilities were essentially required to move to Electronic Health Records, we were given financial incentives that amounted to n...
We are “East Adams Rural Healthcare”. To the great majority of people, “healthcare” means being healed when sick or injured. That is very certainly a key part of what we do, but it is by no means our full mission. We are also deeply concerned with getting everyone in our community fully healthy, and keeping them fully healthy. That second part of our mission operates on several levels: on an individual basis, we want to see you for periodic checkups to assure that you are healthy and, if not, to help you to get there.... Full story
EARH will soon be considering an important choice. That choice is whether or not to join an Accountable Care Organization (ACO). It would be a major step. The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) wants to reduce spending on those services. One tool CMS has developed is ACOs. An ACO is an association of healthcare providers, from individual physician practices to the largest multi-facility networks, banded together to try to decrease Medicare expenditures without reducing the quality of care delivered to patients.... Full story
There are several items to report, and all of them are good news. For one, the Grand Columbia Health Alliance (of which your District is one of five member Districts) has hired a Compliance consultant whose availability will be shared among the member Districts. That is an immediate benefit for our District, but is also just a beginning toward various assistance services that the group will be providing in future, services that would not make economic sense for any one of the Districts on its own. EARH is looking forward to... Full story
The turn of a year is traditionally a time for individuals and institutions to look both back and foreword. For your District, 2017 was a year with good news and not-so-good news. The renovation work, requiring blocks of the facility to be closed off for extended periods, significantly reduced patient-traffic flow for almost the whole first quarter. Then, the burden of the Care Center continued. And we lost, through his retirement from the Board, a great asset in Jerry Snyder. On the good side, though, despite all the... Full story
The status of the East Adams Care Center, currently operated by Adams County Public Hospital District No. 2, has now reached a critical decision point. The District was given the Care Center at no cost in mid-2014 by its then-owner, Life Care Centers of America, who strongly implied that if the District did not accept the Care Center, they would close it. The decision whether to accept it and continue operating it was a difficult one, and the District went to the community for advice in a town-hall meeting on Aug. 14, 2014....