Afew weeks after Preston Sauers, longtime employee and director of business operations, left to pursue his master’s degree at Wichita State University, Ellsworth County Medical Center chief executive officer Andrew Bair announced yet another departure from the ECMC ranks during the hospital’s July 17 board meeting.

He said Lynnette Dick, the hospital’s director of information technology, is leaving ECMC after 23 years to focus on helping abused young women get a restart in life.

“Her influence here has been powerful over the years,” Bair said.“She has been a tremendous leader for this group, and so we’re going to miss her.”

Dick’s last day will be Aug. 2.

Bair also announced that a successor to Sauers has been found. Ronald Christiansen of Sylvan Grove will assume the director of business operations duties at ECMC in late August. Until then, Lynn Brock will serve as the interim director.

Bair also introduced Kayla Speck, executive assistant for both Bair and the board.

“If you need documents, historical stuff or if you need to just track me down, she is the quickest way to do that,” Bair said.

Bair said Ryan Lahey, a new physician’s assistant student at ECMC, is sitting for his boards next month.

“He has impressed everybody,” Bair said.“This young man is exceptional. It is our hope that we can keep him here for a very long time.”

Lahey will be working out of the Ellsworth, Holyrood and Lucas clinics as well as covering the emergency room.

Bair also noted it was the first official meeting for new board member Tammy Moore. She succeeds Bernie Schulte who recently retired from the board.

In other business:

• The board reorganized as follows: Kenny Beneda, chairman; Moore, vice chairman; Kenny Schepmann, secretary; Karen Pauley, treasurer. The time and date for board meetings stayed the same at 5:30 p.m. the third Wednesday of the month in the hospital conference room. The Ellsworth County Independent-Reporter was reappointed the official newspaper; Roger Peterson was re-appointed the board attorney and Citizen’s State Bank and Trust Co. Inc., the Golden Plains Credit Union, First Bank of Kansas, Lyons Federal Savings, Lorraine State Bank, Wilson State Bank and the Bank of Holyrood were reappointed official financial institutions of the hospital.

Pauley was appointed as the board representative to the risk management committee, board member Deb Hyman was appointed as the board representative to the med staff committee and Moore was appointed as the board representative to the Ellsworth County Healthcare Foundation.

• Approval was given to a new $90,000 Cisco HyerFlex Edge server proposal presented by Dick and Michael Lamia.

Although the current servers are still functioning, Lamia said they have their challenges.

“Our demands have increased over the last five years,” Lamia said, adding with that demand, the system is not able to keep up any longer.

“We need it,” Bair added.

“We considered a hyperconvergence system the last time we upgraded,” Dick said. “Hyperconvergence systems were somewhat new, they’d been around probably four or five years at that point, and they were super expensive. The standard was far cheaper. Today that’s not the case.”

• Approval was given to implement the plan for the Community Health Needs Assessment.

“This was the precurser to our strategic plan,” Bair noted. “It really was the foundation of what we built our strategic plan off of.”

He noted, however, it is a fluid document and that some of it might change over time.

• Approval was given to the hospital’s strategic plan. Several pillars are part of the plan, including marketing, staff, operations, growth/ development and finance.

Bair noted he will present a plan for a score card at the August board meeting so the board can track the plan’s implementation on a monthly basis.

• Shamarie Farthing, director of risk, safety and quality, said the outpatient experiences reached the 100th percentile in reporting measures.

“You can’t get any better than that,” she said.

The hospital is also improving in the area of patient safety.

• Brock said the June interim statement indicates an operating loss of $48,310, with a bottom line loss of $4,057. The average daily census of patients in the hospital increased to five patients. Brock said the cash on hand has increased to 59.24 days. Investments remain stable with an increase from last year of $194,727. Restrictive assets also show a positive variance from last year of $352,846.

• Approval was given to proceed with consideration of the purchase of a new generator for the hospital’s main building. He said the current generator doesn’t have enough power to supply the hospital’s needs in the event of an emergency.

Bair said the plan is to move the current generator over to the administration building and purchase a new generator for the hospital.

Bair said ECMC received a $115,000 grant from the Dane G. Hansen Foundation to put toward the purchase of a new generator. Although several were considered, Bair is recommending the purchase of two smaller Generac generators from Hammeke Electric of Great Bend.

Bair said one is a diesel model and one runs on natural gas. If the diesel fails, the natural gas model will act as a back up.

The price for the generators is $296,000. A baffle system to muffle the sound of the generators increases the cost to $312,000.

In addition to the Hansen grant, Bair said the county will also pay for a portion of the cost of the new generators.

The next meeting of the Ellsworth County Medical Center board of directors will be at 5:30 p.m. Wednesday, Aug. 21, at the hospital conference room.