Community Focus Group Minutes

Patha Flour Mill

January 11, 2002

 

Andrew Craigie, Chris Munoz, Patty Appel, John Crane – PPE Salmon Bay Design, Jim Scoggin, Bud Crickmer, Pat Richardson, Edith Cole, Rich Slaybaugh, Lorna Stone, David Fey – Jensen Fey Architects, Suzanne Grove, Mike Tom, David Harris – DHT2 Architects

 

How has Healthcare changed over the last few years?

 

• It has gotten better over the last few years.  Now that Dr. Zafar and Suzanne Grove are here this has been the greatest improvement.
• Once we lost the stable Doctors.  The real stability happened even further back with Dr. Welch but experienced a loss when he left.  There are issues not as much with the services as much with about attitudes about health.  People historically have accessed healthcare on a crisis basis only.  But people are now starting to be more proactive in there approach to personal healthcare.  It’s the mentality more than the availability of services.  Older people do not complain as much as middle-aged.
• We need to take care of our own.  The situation has changed dramatically, recently, and we need to continue to move forward.
• As a professional we get better follow up from our local providers than the out of town.

 

Strength

 

• Service.  Caring.  They are personal.
• Who else are willing to come out to the car to take your blood, or stay open late so that you don’t have?
• I appreciate the thoroughness to go through a proper assessment of your needs. 
• They take the time they don’t rush you in and out.  You are given the time you need.
• Levy has shown positive support for the hospital district. And appreciate the team that we have here right now.
• People in the community are influenced by gossip and hearsay they are quick to spread negative rumors.  Good news doesn’t travel as fast as bad news.  Some skeptics still being negative.
• Some skeptics not willing to change their care back to the community because they are nervous about being burned.
• I like the new emergency room.
• We have strong leadership now and this has made a big difference.
• We need to provide support to keep them here; we also need to pay them properly.
• It is one thing to be concerned about where the buck is going.  I know we have to stay current and look toward the future.  Need to network with professions who have a broader experience outside of our own little world.

 

Opportunities

 

• Educational opportunities.  To provide improved care.  To feel valued, like they are important.
• Quality of care in the nursing home is as good as you can get.  I have had both parents there, and the care is good.
• The care is better now than it has been.
• Competition for labor and to attract good labor.
• There could be greater opportunities for, training and improved skills.  The skills are there but they don’t get to use their skills enough to keep on the edge.  It is sad that they have the skills and do not get to use the skill.
• Do we have the opportunity to provide more complex levels of care?  By doing this do we miss opportunities or really provide the best possible care.  We have many limited resources that may result in missed opportunities.  We provide stabilizing care.  And treat patients that are moderately complex. 

 

What is the expectation of the community?

 

• Those who know think we are doing a good job.  But some people lack the benefit of being up-to-date on what is going on.
• I think that the community would like another Doctor and assisted living but aside from that they are happy with what we have.  The real opportunity is to have people be more conscious about their own health maintenance.  The whole community needs to be more interested in the community health and wellbeing. 
• Our biggest population is the senior community and we need to be even better at looking at where things are going.
• Problems have been pervasive.  Turnover in administration, and physicians, the biggest expectation is for continuity and then growth, lets keep stable what we have and then look at growing it.
• A few years ago we did wellness clinic to try to get people to bring their care back to the community.
• We need to go to basketball games and educate people.  And employers need to go to the place of work.
• Also problems with the mentality.  These are depression era people.  They only go when they are a mess.
• People like the direction we are heading.  The talk on the street is not always positive but it is getting more positive.
• Concern if our professional medical staff is professionally satisfied.  They do not have all the resources to work to their max potential.
• What do we have to do keep them?  We have to realize that we have to pay our people and it is hard because this is a farming community and the resources are so limited.
• Issues and events become focused on people rather than institutions.  It is easy to become focused on a specific individual rather than on institutions and mechanisms that make the opportunity the most attractive to come and stay.   Culturally and environmentally.
• We need to worry about what we can control, to attract and retain the right people.  To do this we need to have better systems so that people want to practice medicine here.
• We need to develop a network of providers that can provide a range of services in the community to help stabilize the delivery of care.  We need to have more than one face to bond with.  To develop relationships with so that individuals can receive a range of care.
• We need to make sure that what we do is methodical and sustainable so that we don’t go through a boom and bust cycle.
• I don’t think the district could ever afford to allow the providers to have the tools to work to their potential.  We have to sell the life style.  We need to find the right person for what we have to offer.  You have to focus on individual providers because in a small town like this it is all personal.  The providers have been here for decades and relationships are critical to making it all work.
• Some problems in the past with a provider leaving who burned bridges behind them.  Our providers run their butts off keeping this community going medically and we need to support them.
• The roll of the institution is key to ensuring stability.  Don’t forget the roll in the institution in making sure this instability doesn’t happen again.  If the provider chooses to leave there should be a vacuum not a void.  It is a matter more of administrator turnover to ensure that there is stability mechanism. 

 

How well does the facility function to meet the needs of the community?

 

• The hospital is old.  At the time it was built there were not the same standards that there are today.  The clinic was taken over several years ago and we haven’t shifted gears since.
• It’s not a huge issue but it is an issue.  An issue in terms of community perception more than anything else.
• Very proud of the changes that they have made, library, childcare, gentle care, but we are not providing all the tools that our care staff needs to provide the best most efficient care.  It will do but it is not at the level it needs to be.
• It is kind of sad when our community can put so much into our schools but our healthcare facilities are not at the quality they need to be.  We need to work hard politically to invest in the facility.
• The quality of the facility is not a deterrent to people receiving care but it is not becoming.  We are close people so we are willing to accept it.   It may send a message to people, staff and patients, to not have facilities that live up to the expectations of the patient.
• There has been a big change over the past year very little resources.
• We are short on parking.  We have a sales job to the community 300 voted against the levy those people need to see what they are saying no to.
• It is difficult to get people out to see things and get educated.
• We may be criticized for advertising; people don’t want to see the district spend their money on that.   Do we need to spend resources educating a small but vocal group of people?
• We need to move forward.  And do some educating on the way as much as possible.  Try not to manage by the least common denominator.  Rumor sells better than fact.
• The idea of moving forward has to be done in the most reasonable context, and lets face it if we don’t pay the bills or have negative press regarding this is just as bad.
• The service we sell is most important, in this community.  Automating systems focusing on efficiency will improve our service that is marketing.  If we use these systems to encourage preventive care measures and use the system to more efficiently deliver care, and improve perceptions.  Use the system and develop protocols and procedures to go directly to the person.  Take the service to the patient.
• We need resources to make this happen.  Man power to make this happen.  Contacting patients and scheduling follow-up care, systematize the delivery of care and workflow to be efficient.
• The resources can’t always come from our local taxpayer; the government needs to know this.

 

Looking at the demographics of the county.  How are the needs being met of:

 

• Middle aged men and women are not likely to seek care.
• Youth interventions.
• We are doing a good job meeting the needs of children and elderly.
• Women are using the services more; we are doing a better job.  We are not doing OB and prenatal care.  The pediatric area may have some improvement.
• The biggest problem we have is communicating with the community.  The best way is to use the EW, half of this town is not getting the message that it has changed and it is better.  We have a selling job to do.  They have got the wrong message.
• We are working well together as a community and need to continue to do this.  We are actually at a point where most large communities would like to be.