Thursday, March 28, 2024

Ray Eickmeyer honored as Rural Health Hero

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CHELAN - In celebration of National Rural Health Day on November 17, the Washington State Office of Rural Health announced the first annual Rural Health Heroes of Washington Awards. These awards exemplify the outstanding work done by those who provide direct patient care, leadership, and teamwork within their organizations.
North Central Washington winners were Ray Eickmeyer, Director of Lake Chelan Health Emergency Services in the Leader category and Guadalupe Cortez, Lead Nurse and Supervisor of Wound Care Department, Quincy Valley Medical Center in the Direct Patient Care category. Tulalip Health Clinic staff won in the Team Category. The chosen winners had to demonstrate one or more of the following criteria to be nominated as a Health Hero:
* Commitment: bringing impactful change to their community.
* Leadership: advancing leadership capacity to improve population health and health equity in their community.
* Fearlessness: showing tenacity in driving change and innovation that impacts rural communities.
* Compassion: showing an exceptional level of empathy and generosity for team members and patients.
 Eickmeyer was born and raised in Spokane, where he started as a volunteer firefighter and then became a resident firefighter before going to Paramedic School. He has been with Lake Chelan Health in Emergency Services for 23 years. His wife Christina is a paramedic and teaches college EMT classes; and they have two children, a 14-year-old daughter and a 10-year-old son.
He jumped in with both feet to serve the community with COVID-19 pandemic interventions. Within 90 days of the start of the pandemic, Ray implemented a telemedicine program for proactive community infection surveillance and screening of people in their homes for symptoms of COVID; as well as navigation of support for people who needed help. Ray was instrumental in the first responder response by helping to create the Chelan/Douglas County EMS response plan for the pandemic with Medical Program Director Dr. Jobe. Ray also created a video to educate the community about COVID and how to protect themselves and others from infection. Eickmeyer is passionate about health equity and ensured that no one in his community has been left behind in the COVID-19 response.
Early on, Ray stepped up and volunteered to use his staff and resources to deliver COVID-19 testing and vaccinations to meet the community where they were at. His team took on the responsibility to vaccinate first responders (police, fire, EMS, forest service, park service) for all of Chelan and Douglas Counties. Ray has been laser-focused on serving the most vulnerable people in his community, and he was the first in the state to provide mobile vaccination clinics to reach agricultural workers.
Governor Jay Inslee traveled to see Ray’s mobile vaccine clinic at Chelan Fruit, where 300 employees were vaccinated. He has coordinated, planned, and implemented mobile and mass vaccination clinics to jails, people experiencing homelessness, temporary and migrant agricultural workers in orchards, seven different school districts, colleges, adult family homes, assisted living facilities, homebound people, nursing homes, essential workers, the Colville Tribe, and more.
He also coordinated mobile vaccinations to remote villages and towns including Holden Village and Stehekin.
Rural Health Heroes of Washington will be honored in March 2023 at the National Rural Health Conference.

 

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