Ellsworth County Medical Center chief executive officer Andrew Bair gave kudos to the hospital’s staff during the Sept. 25 meeting of the hospital’s board of directors.

Bair said when it comes to quality and providing services to patients, ECMC is in the top 10.

Regarding outpatient services, Bair said ECMC scored 100 percent for the likelihood of patients recommending a friend or family member to select ECMC for healthcare.

Bair noted the overall rating for doctors in the Rural Health Clinic by patients is 98.5 percent, with the emergency room remaining in the top decile at 98.5 percent for the year. He noted the inpatient overall rating for ECMC for the year is 92.4 percent.

Bair said he will be working with Shamarie Farthing, director of quality and safety, to develop managerial scorecards. These will be rolled out in the near future for tracking performance improvement. Each department director will be responsible for their department’s quality, team, service and financial performance. They will also be responsible to develop 90 day action plans for improvement.

In other business:

• Bair said the recent Kansas Hospital Association Conference was one of the best trade shows he has ever been to. While there, Bair said he met various representatives from the healthcare field. He said the National Rural Healthcare Association Conference was more educational, offering instruction on best practices and how to improve in all aspects of rural healthcare. Bair learned that 46 percent of rural hospitals are in the red and that bad debt has increased since the introduction of the Affordable Care Act in 2010.

Bair said the law regarding price transparency is onerous. He said ECMC wants to comply, yet policymakers seem to be unaware of the labor involved in complying. Bair also said the conference validated the medical center’s approach to clinic practice.

• Bair said 25 patients have come to the hospital’s new pain management clinic since Aug. 1. There have been a total of 12 procedures, with five more patients in the clinic and four more procedures scheduled. Feedback on the physicians has been positive.

• Board member Karen Pauley suggested looking into grants to help educate the community to get assistance with the Opioid crisis. Bair will follow up on this issue.

• Board member Kenny Schepmann suggested advertising that ECMC has new employees or what the hospital has going on in the clinic instead of advertising pain management.

• Bair presented and explained the hospital’s new organizational chart. He has leveled out the workload amongst the executive team and reassigned directors to an executive team member in order to reduce his workload. Bair said he wants to focus more on rural healthcare legislation, the providers and strategic issues concerning the hospital.

During these transitions, Bair said no one was terminated or lost wages. They were only reassigned or changed jobs.

• Bair said Beth Vallier has given 14 great and loyal years to ECMC. He noted she has done a fabulous job doing multiple key roles simultaneously. Vallier worked with recruiting, marketing, community communications and emergency preparedness. Bair said because the hospital has been working to transfer some of her work, Vallier’s departure should not affect the hospital as much as it would have before. Vallier has taken the role of a regional emergency preparedness coordinator, placing her over multiple hospitals in the region, including ECMC.

“She will be greatly missed,” Bair said.

• Bair said he recently had a closed-door meeting with the ECMC medical providers. The care model was discussed, as a provider cannot be in two places at the same time. The concern is that, in regards to patient care, a provider may leave a patient waiting in the emergency room or in the clinic while treating another patient.

Compensation was also discussed. Bair said he showed the providers various percentiles the medical staff is currently paid which do not reflect production-based pay. The med staff agrees the current model needs to be changed and has agreed to allow Bair to create a new model. This will be presented to the board by the beginning of December.

Multidisciplinary rounds were also discussed. These are when all the different medical staff — physicians, nurses, pharmacology, etc. — make rounds together to see patients and their family all at once. Bair strongly endorses this concept and is working this into the new model project he is working on.

Scheduling was also discussed. The focus was on creating an equitable process to schedule providers work hours and time off.

Bair said he wants to prevent burn-out scenarios for the medical staff. He noted it is important for both employees and the medical staff to have a good work-life balance.

• Within two weeks of the arrival of Charlie Soeken, the hospital’s new director of information technology, it was determined that offers to assess ECMC’s information technology systems were not needed as Soeken has the expertise to do the work without the help of a consultant.

• Interim financial director Lynn Brock reported a slight loss for the month in August due to three payrolls during the period. She noted impatient days will be higher in September than in August.

Pauley noted adjustments should be made to move away from including the 403B discount prescription drug plan in next year’s budget.

• Bair updated the board on the wound care clinic and his intent to increase the popularity of the clinic and increase revenue.