
Married Physician Duo Make Texas County and TCMH New Home
June 29, 2018
Two-time Scholarship Recipient Working Toward Doctor of Pharmacy Degree
June 29, 2018The Missouri Hospital Association held a conference in Springfield at the end of April covering aspects of the different roles that hospitals, law enforcement, and emergency medical services have in patient care.
On Tuesday the Texas County Memorial Hospital board of trustees welcomed Tim Ceplina, Houston Chief of Police to the monthly meeting. Ceplina along with Bill Bridges, TCMH emergency services director and Amanda Turpin, TCMH quality director attended the conference.
Wes Murray, TCMH chief executive officer explained that the conference was designed to promote collaboration between hospital personnel and law enforcement. The content focused on providing education to law enforcement about the laws that health care facilities are required to adhere to. The program created a sense of unity among those who attended.
“The education provided really helped,” Murray said.
Ceplina was invited to share his experiences from the conference and what he learned from the event.
“The benefits of having TCMH here in our community are endless- not just to the citizens, but to our local law enforcement too,” Ceplina said. “After attending the conference, I have definitely became aware of a few things that are lacking in healthcare today.”
“It is apparent to me after that our community is in need of a mental health coordinator,” Ceplina said.
TCMH has had many recent patient events that would have warranted the assistance of a mental health coordinator if our community had available that could be a resource to us.
Currently, the hospital continues to seek support from local law enforcement when the need for their assistance arises. Unfortunately, the need presents itself more frequently than we would like.
“We need to keep our relationship of communication going,” Ceplina said. “We are as big of a resource to you all as you are to us.”
Houston is a small community and everyone needs to support one another. Building a strong collaboration between law enforcement, emergency services and the hospital is key to our continued success.
“We are blessed to have the willing support of the Houston Police Department in our community,” Murray said. “We have a great relationship and they are always there to support us when we need them.”
Turpin mentioned that it was a very positive experience to see how supportive the Houston Police Department were of the hospital.
“We have a leg up on other hospitals in this regard, not all communities have this type of relationship with their local police department,” Turpin said.
In his administrative report, Murray, mentioned that TCMH has three new physicians starting soon. Dr. Jason Loden, general surgeon will begin working at TCMH starting on July 2, followed by Dr. Teresa Loden, pediatrician for the Houston clinic on August 1, and Dr. Doug Crase, family medicine physician for the Licking clinic on August 13.
Murray also mentioned that TCMH will begin telemedicine services with Dr. Robin Trotman later this summer. Dr. Trotman will provide infectious disease care for patients as well as assist with some quality initiatives to better patient care in the hospital.
According to Murray, there were some recent changes to benefits for TCMH staff that went into effective on June 10. Changes included increases in paid time off accrual rates, holiday pay for PRN and part-time staff, and increases in shift differentials for night shift staff.
Linda Pamperien, chief financial officer at TCMH, presented the financial report for the month of May.
“Overall revenues were down $114,624 from our budgeted expectations in May,” Pamperien said. “Inpatient volumes were down $144,206, but outpatient revenue was up $86,353.”
TCMH ended the month of May with a positive bottom line of $71,368 and a year-to-date loss of $574,253.
Pamperien explained that TCMH received a notification from Medicare that the Low Volume Adjustment (LVA) that the hospital receives will be an additional 17% payment of all inpatient Medicare charges since October 1, 2017. The anticipated reimbursement will be an additional $600,000 annually.
Murray mentioned that he and Pamperien had their second meeting with the Texas County Commission about the issues discussed at the March board meeting. Discussions will be ongoing.
Present at the meeting were Murray; Pamperien; Doretta Todd-Willis; Jonathan Beers, DO, chief of staff; Rachel Davis, director of public relations; Turpin; board members, Jim Perry, OD; Omanez Fockler; Janet Wiseman; Jay Loveland; Mark Hampton; Guests, Ceplina; and William Mahoney, CoxHealth Representative.
No members were absent from the meeting.
The next meeting of the TCMH board of trustees is Tuesday, July 24 at 12 p.m. in the hospital board room.