Sport Physicals Offered for Area Athletes
June 12, 2019
Sharla Kinker is June Employee of the Month
July 3, 2019
Texas County Memorial Hospital board members heard from Wes Murray, TCMH chief executive officer and Alan Moss, EdD, Houston R-1 School District superintendent regarding the development of the health science/CNA (certified nurse assistant) program for Houston High School students.
The joint venture between Houston R-1 School District and TCMH began after concerns were discussed regarding the amount of time students spend commuting back and forth to West Plains each day during the school year to attend classes and complete clinical rotations.
“When we send our kids to West Plains, it is a two-hour commute each day,” Moss said. “The program would appeal to more students if the program were right here in Houston compared to the average of eight or nine that are currently enrolled.”
Moss mentioned that the students currently complete their clinical training in West Plains and starting the program in Houston would allow the students to complete their training right here in their own community.
“A lot of times we end up losing very talented future employees to West Plains because of the attachments that the students build with the facilities that they train at,” Moss added.
“There is a need for great healthcare workers right here in our community,” Moss said. “It makes perfect sense that we should try to make achieving a quality education right here at home, as convenient as possible.”
Murray explained that CNA programs are often a first step to students pursuing nursing degrees and that TCMH has great nurses that first became CNA’s.
“We would be delighted to be a part of their educational experience from the very beginning,” Murray said. “We believe in growing our own here at TCMH which began with the implementation of the Youth Ambassador Program for area high school students. Partnering with the school district to bring this education back to Houston for the benefit of our own community is perfectly in line with our belief that we’ve already had for many years.”
Murray mentioned that TCMH already has two nurses approved to become instructors for the program with a third currently going through the approval process.
After all of the nurse instructors are approved, they must attend instructor training at an approved training site.
“We are working on obtaining an approval to have one additional nurse instructor class offered for our staff to attend,” Amanda Turpin, TCMH Quality director said. “Currently, there are not any additional classes being offered in 2019.”
“There has been a lot of work taking place over the course of several months to bring this program back to Houston,” Murray said.
Murray added that Rob Harrington, Houston’s new economic developer, has been instrumental in helping to secure a teaching location with the owners of the old Lee building.
“We are fully committed to getting this program started here,” Moss said. “Our school board fully supports this joint effort.”
“Talking about adding a vocational school is one thing, but actually doing it is something else,” Jim Perry, OD, said. “This is great for the community!”
Linda Pamperien, TCMH chief financial officer, presented the financial report for the month of May.
Despite decreased revenue challenges for the month on the inpatient side, outpatient departments saw an increase in revenue in May.
“Overall revenues were down $245,992 in May from our budgeted expectations,” Pamperien said. “Inpatient volumes were down $283,958, but our outpatient revenue was up $163,000 for the month.”
TCMH closed out the month of May with total gross operating revenue of $6,782,204.26 with net revenues after reductions and contractuals being $2,707,221.46.
TCMH ended the month of May with a negative bottom line of $230,973.15 and a negative year-to-date loss of $497,314.01.
Pamperien mentioned to the board of trustees that issues have continued to surface with CPSI, the EMR (electronic medical record) that was implemented in the clinics last fall.
“In early June, CPSI loaded a patch to their system that was supposed to help with some of the problems we have been dealing with,” Pamperien explained. “As a result of the patch, we have had 10 other complicated issues arise within the program. At this time, only a few of the issues have been resolved.”
Pamperien added that the PACS server for the hospital, the place that stores all imaging, also went down in June.
“The company drove a brand new server to us all the way from Mobile, AL,” Pamperien said. “However, some of the older images stored on the server were unavailable for physicians to view for over a week.”
“Although we are discouraged by all of the technical issues we have been dealing with in the recent months, we are committed to working each day to ensure that those who are responsible for getting these issues resolved for us are held accountable,” Pamperien said.
Murray reported to the board of trustees that TCMH received several propane bids for the upcoming winter season.
“MFA Oil presented TCMH with the best rate and we anticipate to save approximately $31K over last year’s propane expenditures,” Murray said. “We are very thankful for the savings we should have.”
Present at the meeting were Murray; Pamperien; Turpin; Doretta Todd-Willis, chief nursing officer; Rachel Davis, public relations; Linda Milholen, MD; board members, Perry; Omanez Fockler; Jay Loveland and guest, Moss.
Board members, Allan Branstetter and Janet Wiseman were not present at the meeting.
The next meeting of the TCMH board of trustees is Tuesday, June 25 at 12 p.m. in the hospital board room.