LCCHC continues CEO recruitment

CHELAN – Old and new business were addressed in the Sept. 25 Lake Chelan Community Hospital and Clinics meeting board.

Starting with old business, Board Director Mary Signorelli addressed the Board committees memberships. “The six committees that we have as a board are utility, facilities, finance, credentialing, affiliation and community outreach. We are going to take credentialing off as a standing committee because it’s not a standing committee of the Board, it is actually a committee of the Med staff and we are going to continue to review the credentials presented to the Board,” said Signorelli.

Signorelli also had a CEO recruitment update, “this afternoon we are going into executive session towards the end the meeting and we will have a discussion on the seven candidates that the screening committee recommended for us to look at, to decide if we want to interview all seven candidates or if we want to shake it down and settle with five or three, that’s where we are.”

Along with that, Signorelli also had an update regarding the USDA loan for the new hospital, “we are probably as close as we have ever been to being able to say it’s a done deal … we have gotten tentative approval, there’s only one piece that needs to go in to the system, once it’s up in to the system, it is my understanding that we are pretty much approved and the final letter of approval will be coming to us after that.”

Interim CEO Steve Patonai explained that all the feedback they have received has been positive and there was no concerns. That evening they were going to meet up and sign the final acceptance document, “we take that as an almost there, but not quite,” he said.

A resolution was passed in order for Patonai to sign such documents and represent LCCHC.
Patonai move on into new business, first off he spoke about the Board Bylaws Renewal. “Every two years the Board Bylaws have to be reviewed and approved, they actually expire in November, but we ask for the approval of the bylaws and the minor edits to it,” Patonai said.

After this, Patonai moved on and presented the 2019 Business Plan draft, “what we did was come up with a series of strategies for each of the goals.”

Each strategy will have a time table to help measure it’s success, the goals cover a 10 year vision elements.

There are six goals or Pilars of Performance LCCHC will try achieve success in they include: people, service, quality/safety, growth/innovation, finance and community.

The Business Plan also includes the Physician/Provider recruitment plan, the 2019 Budget and 2019 Capital which will be added towards the end of the year.

EMS Director Ray Eickmeyer provided the Board with an EMS Update.

Currently there are 14 EMT's, six of them work full-time and 16 paramedics, eight of them work full-time.

High EMS employee satisfaction is very important because it means that the team members will perform at a higher level.

In 2017 EMS responded to 1,407 calls, in 2018 it appears that such number will be surpass.

EMS believes those numbers are increasing because the community is trusting them more and believing in them, another reason to add to includes population growth. “We had as many calls in January as August last year,” said Eickmeyer.   

Seventy percent of those calls are in the Chelan area, 23 percent in Manson and seven percent other locations, which for the most part include cities nearby that ask EMS for mutual aid.

In 2017, 66 percent of the EMS calls were from those patients of 50 years or older, EMS was able to get to most call within five minutes at 82 percent. The greatest reason for 911 calls in 2017 were falls with 11 percent or 155 calls.

In the last 10 years, EMS has saved 17 lives, they are at 80 percent ROSC rate cumulative over the last eight years and their Utstain save rate over the last eight years is of 60 percent.
EMS is leading in CPR training, they are also leaders in prevention. They are also one of two EMS units in Eastern Washington who can treat an infectious patient, EMS is also pushing to “go out there and push patient care on wheels in their homes,” stated Eickmeyer.