Paris, Tenn. –There was good news and bad news for the Henry County Medical Center Board of Trustees Thursday night.
The good news was the announcement from State Senator John Stevens that HCMC will be the one of the first rural hospitals to receive new grant funding for rural residency programs.
The bad news is the increase in COVID-19 cases in Henry County in recent weeks.
Dr. Whitby introduced Dr. Amanda Finley, who in turn introduced State Sen. John Stevens, R-Huntingdon, who spoke on the first year of the Rural Residency Program grant and the journey to be able to start the residency program in the Fall 2023.
“I cannot tell you how excited I am to see this program come to fruition,” said Dr. Finley. “We are excited that this new third year class could potentially be residents at our organization.”
Dr. Finley, Sen. Stevens and CEO Lisa Casteel met in the fall and were able to work with him to push through legislation to fund more rural residency programs at rural hospitals in the state of Tennessee. Senator Stevens discussed the grant funding and program to assist rural hospitals.
“What has helped to push this funding forward is the impact of how the population of TN has doubled, but the residency program has stayed stagnant across the state,” Sen. Stevens said. “We need physicians in our rural communities and providing the opportunity in rural communities allows them to see and want to stay once they experience it. We are excited that Henry County Medical Center will be leading the way in this program.”
Casteel explained the impact of having residents experience rural healthcare before they come to practice here and the ability the program will have to recruit and retain physicians to our community.
“It is exciting times for us at Henry County Medical Center,” Casteel said. “We are the largest employer in our county and having the ability to be able to offer this opportunity in our community and grow our physician community is a benefit to everyone.”
She updated the board on the COVID-19 situation, noting that hospitalizations have substantially increased in the state, with 97% of the new COVID-19 cases among those who have not been vaccinated.
Henry County, as of July 21, is at a 36.73% vaccination rate. The positivity rate in Henry County is at 13.7% with an average of two to four inpatients a day.
“We have received some grant funding to our Rural Health Clinics to help educate people on vaccination,” she said. “We will be working with education leadership to develop some ideas to get the word out and help get more people vaccinated.”
In other business:
Casteel provided her CEO report to the board, discussing the issues with hiring staff. She explained that physicians ask her daily why we don’t have staff to open the closed floors and fill our vacancies.”
“Recruitment today is not what it used to be,” she said. “You don’t just get applications in and bring in and hire. We are competing globally for healthcare positions today. Current demand is 31% higher than pre-COVID average demand. There are 21,159 open nursing travel jobs, which is 133% higher than the demand a year ago. And it’s not just RN positions.”
–She also updated the Board on Joint Commission’s visit, clearing HCMC of all conditional level findings. As an organization, we are continuing to assess and grow our Behavioral Health Services to offer outpatient and telehealth behavioral health services, with a goal to kick off the program in September, which is National Suicide Prevention Month. As part of our strategic goals and Delta Grant population health initiatives, this is one of the priority areas for our community. With this push and the Rural Health Network Development grant, which has a focus on growing our telehealth network especially with behavioral health, the time is right to launch this program. The Paris and Henry County Healthcare Foundation also plans to raise funds for the program during its Casino Night event on Oct. 23.
Casteel also pointed out the recent visit to Saint Thomas to discuss our affiliation, additional services, and strategies. “Saint Thomas will be placing a locums Cardiologist in our community until we can recruit a full time replacement to the community.”
Additionally, Casteel provided a list of upcoming events and an overview of complaints and grievances. The Board of Trustees talked in depth about the recruitment issues and the shortage of nurses as well as pay difference that are helping to create the issues.
–Scott Whitby, MD, Board of Trustees Chairman, opened the meeting by introducing Meghan Baumer, one of the new third year medical students from Lincoln Memorial University that began clinical rotations this week at Henry County Medical Center.
Baumer is doing a surgical rotation and she shared with the Board of Trustees her experiences so far in the rotation. She has already assisted in surgery and has had the opportunity to see how the Mako robot works among other things.
“I am learning so much and it has been a wonderful experience so far,” said Baumer.
–Chief Finance Officer Brad Bloemer began his report by reviewing the activity and performance summary. For June, our case mix index was 1.61 with our average length of stay for the fiscal year at 4.29. Our Debt Service Coverage Ratio was 4.85 which was significantly better than budget of 3.87. He also reported on our statistic, showcasing the impact of COVID-19 on our numbers, with everything seeing a downward trend, except for surgeries and outpatient visits.
With our fiscal year end, we have a profit of $5.1 million, with much of that due to stimulus funding. For June, HCMC made a profit of $1.269.978, which was a very good month for the organization. Profit margin for the year was at 5%.
“Salaries were very high for the month due to the loyalty bonus that was paid out to employees from stimulus funding,” Bloemer said.
Photo: Senator John Stevens as he discusses with the HCMC Board of Trustees the new grant funding that the state has earmarked to rural residency programs. HCMC will be one of the first rural hospital facilities to receive this funding. HCMC photo.