Stop the bleeding, stabilize the patient, and move into the healing process.
That’s the prescription William Henry, the new chief executive officer of Blue Ridge Medical Center, explained last week as he and a staff of people who “truly love and care about this community” work to save the hospital formerly known as Fannin Regional.
While the prescription is already being administered, the return full health is on a two-year plan. The hospital’s road to recovery is being steered by Dava Health, the hospital’s new owners, and Java Medical Group, LLC, which is in charge of day-to-day management.
Henry outlined the two cornerstones last week that will turn the failing hospital around; the support of the community and the dedication of everyone at the hospital.
Henry said, “Motivating the community to support the hospital” is critical to healing a hospital that was in a dire situation under its previous owners.
Part of that motivation is providing the right services. The hospital “will be whatever you want it to be. (We’ll) do what the community needs, not what we think they need,” Henry said.
That comes from studying services that can be successfully handled locally, the use of those services by the community, and listening to what people want to see.
Several changes have already been made in this direction.
Henry said the Intensive Care Unit and the traditional inpatient service, as it was known, have been closed.
He, and Director of Nursing Jennifer Richbourg, were quick to point out that patients would stay in the hospital as long as needed and some services once thought of as inpatient were still being handled on an outpatient basis.
“The patient will still get the amount of care they need, inpatient or outpatient,” Henry said.
Calling the amount of time a patient is in the hospital inpatient, outpatient or observation is simply a matter of working around federal laws.
Richbourg explained how various amounts of observation periods are needed for patients, often after surgeries. “While the patient is here, we do what they need,” she said.
Richbourg said an observation period could take two hours or 36 hours, or any amount of time. The hospital has the staff to handle any time needed.
Previously, the public would have thought of an overnight stay, for instance, as inpatient care. It would now likely be called observation.
“The last thing we want to do is transfer a patient,” Henry said.
Richbourg said as long as the patient’s condition is something that can be taken care of locally, that patient will be taken care of locally.
She also said services including IV antibiotics and blood transfusions are still done at the hospital on an outpatient basis. Previously patients needing those services would have been admitted to the hospital. “The care is exactly the same,” she said.
A major change at the hospital has been to hire a new management team for the Emergency Department and add some new doctors for the operation.
Other efforts to meet community needs have included adding Blue Cross/Blue Shield of Tennessee to the list of accepted insurances, and contracting to take Medicaid from outside states.
Henry’s plan for the hospital calls for every employee to be dedicated to the best quality care possible. He said that attitude among employees is part of what attracted him here.
Henry said the first time he visited the hospital he saw people still here that “truly love and care about this community.”
In similar situations, where hospitals were known to be in dire financial straits, or even where closings had already been announced, employees were leaving as quickly as they could fine other jobs.
Richbourg backed up Henry’s observation, saying she has been in nursing 29 years, worked at a variety of hospitals, and “I love this one the best.”
Henry said he is in a hospital “full of people not giving up.”
To be successful, both agreed providing care has to be done with “heart.”
On the business side, to heal the facility, the hospital has applied to become a Rural Emergency Hospital, which allows it to provide emergency services, observation care, and additional medical and outpatient care. Surgeries will continue to be a large portion of those services.
The next step will be to seek designation as a Critical Access Hospital, which is expected to take an additional 18 months.
Once that is successful, Henry said, “We should have inpatient facilities back.”
(Editor’s note: For more on the financial situation at Blue Ridge Medical Center, see Glenn Harbison’s column this week).