Hospital Board schedules forum

CHELAN – As suggested by the Community Committee, the Lake Chelan Hospital and Clinic  will hold a District Forum on the Hospital on Wednesday, May 8, at the Lake Chelan Senior Center starting at 5:30 p.m.

Celeste Hankins member of the Community Committee offered topic ideas to cover in the forum; the Hospital and the Board’s vision, individual committee reports, plus a question and answer section.

“As a board, we will discuss later maybe having some kind of workshop that will be more specific about what the topics for that particular night will be,” said Commissioner Jordana LaPorte. LaPorte mentioned that the committees meet two more times before the event.

During the meeting, she would like for the committees to have a discussion about what they have been working on, plus come up with a list of questions and answers.

That same day, the Board was supposed to hear from the Facility Steering Facilities Committee, however, the item got tabled for the next meeting. “There are a couple of issues we need to discuss before any decisions are made ... we would discuss further before recommendations to the Board,” said Board Chair Phyllis Gleasman, who is a member of the committee.

A progress report on the Service and Quality/Safety was presented by Kris Haasl, Courtney Wallace and Brad Hankins. Haasl reported on the Service pillar which mainly deals with improving patient satisfaction, so far all goals are “green.” Wallace stated that the staff is doing all the work needed to meet the goals, “they are staying on top of it doing a wonderful job,” she said.

Recruitment for a CFO that has strong revenue cycle and financial operations capabilities is currently taking place, informed Hospital CEO Steve Patonai. “We had three candidates, one we pulled away from and the other two took other positions elsewhere ... we have three more in the pipeline right now,” said Patonai. He mentioned that current CFO Vickie Bodle needs “additional horsepower in the finance department,” since she is dealing with the construction project and USDA loans.  

Committee meetings will now be scheduled during the first two weeks of the month to allow the minutes to have a quick turn around process. Currently, the committee minutes take up to one month to get approved. The idea will now be to approve them electronically that way the Board can view the minutes during the monthly meeting.

The Board will hold an open workshop on April 16 starting at 4:30 p.m. in order to discuss an array of different topics, the agenda is yet to be determined. The next regular meeting will be on April 23 at 1:30 p.m.