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events page. See you in Chicago.
This is Laura Dirdle with the Becker's Healthcare
podcast.
I'm thrilled today to be joined by doctor
JR Ford, emergency department medical director and emergency
medicine physician at Hendrick Medical Center, Brownwood,
and Christa Beatty,
chief administrative officer at Hendrick Medical Center, Brownwood.
Doctor Ford, Christa, thank you so much for
being here today.
Thank you for having us, Laura. Thanks, Laura.
Now I'm looking forward to our conversation, and
it'll be really exciting to learn a little
bit more about,
you know, some of the great things that
you're doing at Hendrick Medical Center, Brownwood, and
really how you're thinking about growth and development
in the future. But before we dive in
there, I would love to learn a little
bit more about you both as well as
Hendrick Medical Center, Brownwood. So, Krista, can we
start with you? Can you tell us about
Hendrick Medical Center and really where you're at
today and where you're headed?
Absolutely.
Thank you again for your time. The Hendrick
Medical Center in Brownwood is located in Central
Texas.
We are about 2 hours from major metropolitan
area,
part of a system, part of the Hendrick
Health System,
which is comprised of 3 hospitals.
The system,
currently has about 54 100 employees and serves
about 24 counties.
Here in Brownwood,
we have about 19,000
people in our city
and then serve about 38,000
here in our 8 county area.
So
currently, we are seeing about 45
to 70 patients on the inpatient side.
At acquisition time 4 years ago when Hendrick
acquired,
Brownwood what was Brownwood Regional? There were 19
patients in the hospital. So we are very
proud of the growth that we have experienced
over the last 4 years.
And that's really impressive to hear. And certainly
great that you've been able to,
continue to grow and develop it and better
serve the community,
since that acquisition.
Now, doctor Ford, from your perspective, you know,
could you tell us a little bit about
yourself and your career? How have you evolved
and what brought you to Hendrick Medical Center,
Brownwood?
Thank you, Laura. So I'm a board certified
emergency medicine physician. I had been practicing
in Abilene,
Texas under Hendrick Medical Center System
since 2017.
I did residency at John Peter Smith in
Fort Worth and came out to Abilene
to work.
And September of last year, I was asked
to come
lead
a change
down in the Brownwood emergency department. And so
they brought me to help,
help our ER be a little more efficient,
but also help our relationship with the community
and just bring a little bit
of,
you know, kindness, thoughtfulness,
and compassionate care to the emergency department.
Well, that's fascinating. You know? And certainly, all
of those things are so important to having
a functional and and, beneficial
ED for the entire community. I I know
from the business and and just administrative standpoint,
how challenging it can be to run an
efficient emergency department, but then, 2, to inject
that kind of sense of kindness, compassion in
community within the care delivered,
just takes everything up a notch. And so
that's really cool to hear that, you know,
you are have the opportunity to leave that
type of change.
Now, you know, when taking that context, what
are some of your,
could you tell us about that change a
little bit in some of your top priorities
for the rest of the year as I
can imagine it continues to evolve?
So this year, we finished a remodel and
expansion of the emergency department.
We had experienced
6% growth
2 years ago and 8% growth this past
year. And so our volumes have been steadily
increasing.
And so we've needed to expand our emergency
department.
We went from
12 rooms to
15 rooms and ability to do some hall
beds when things are very busy. We've increased
nursing staffing in the emergency department
as well.
And so and we've also are looking at
expanding,
some APP coverage
to kinda help when things are a little
bit busy down there to kinda see people
and triage and develop a provider and triage,
model to help see people quickly and make
sure everybody gets
seen and evaluated
in a timely manner. And so looking forward
to the rest of this year, it's looking
to
enjoy our new space, which we're very appreciative
for all the remodel down there. It's
been awesome to have
and very appreciative that the administration
felt the need to help us out with
that. And then also just learning new systems
as we're
having our consistent area to go ahead
and see everybody in a timely fashion and
make sure they get the appropriate workup orders
seen quickly and make sure they know they're
being taken care of well.
That's such an excellent point. And, you know,
definitely fantastic that you have the support of
the hospital administration behind you. So,
you know, you can have the resources you
need in order to,
continue to boost the emergency department and and
provide a better service to the broader community.
Krista, from your perspective,
could you tell us a little bit about,
you know,
how the hospital was able to, you know,
really make this decision to improve the ED
and some of the results that you've been
able to see so far?
Absolutely.
When we joined the Hendrick Health System,
we knew that in order to make this
a successful
transition, that we were gonna have to rebuild
the trust,
not only
of the patients and our community, but also
for our
physicians and our providers,
and then also the hospitals, the smaller hospitals
that are in our region.
And so,
I think it's pretty much about the people.
And so going in and making sure that
we have the right nursing staff, the right
support staff, and also the right physicians,
in order to provide that high quality care.
I'm happy to say that currently, we have
zero contract labor in our emergency department,
and that has been very intentional with the
recruitment
of nursing staff. Our,
leadership, nursing leadership has really thought outside the
box in order to
recruit recruit high quality,
nursing staff, and so I contributed to the
people.
We have been able to add,
in the
hospital market, 230
additional employees
since acquisition. And so when you have
the ability
to be very picky about the people that
you hire,
I think you provide a different service and
a different level of care to help, rebuild
the trust of of the community. And so
our goal is to keep patients close to
home.
The closest higher level of care,
Abilene Hospital, is about an hour and 15
minutes away. And so we know that it's
important
to our community to stay close to home
to receive their health care.
We fortunately
have,
a health system that is very supportive
and, helps us to provide
not just the staff but the infrastructure
and support financially to be able to to
provide those, services.
That's amazing to hear. And, you know, especially
thinking about the adding staff portion of it,
you know, it's, been such a challenging few
years to try to recruit and retain talent
across the board. And so it's impressive to
hear that you've been able to add the
right kind of,
muscle to your team in order to see
this transformation out and,
have the opportunity to continue to grow and
expand the services that you're providing.
Absolutely.
Now, you know, you you've been able to
tell us,
or talk through some of this transformation in
broad terms. I I'm wondering what other programs
or initiatives have been most needle moving for
you in the last year or so.
I can tell you from the emergency department
standpoint,
our interventional cardiology
program led by doctor Blanc
has been such
a great service to have.
Doctor Blanc is out here, and he is,
he is seeing everybody that he can to
taking care of a large population of a
large,
older population that we have in our in
our eight county area.
And, he is he is amazing.
He he goes out into the other areas.
He has outreach clinics
in, multiple cities,
that are around Brownwood
and make sure to go out there and
see people where they are at instead of
everybody coming to Brownwood and so people can
stay closer to home.
We've added dialysis
recently
whenever we needed to have inpatient dialysis done
on a patient. So even if we're admitting
a patient who gets Monday, Wednesday, Friday dialysis,
even if we're admitting them for 24 or
48 hours, we were having to transfer these
patients out of the emergency department.
And that's no longer the case. The administration,
got us a nephrology program here to help
us do inpatient dialysis. So that has helped
us with not having to transfer out so
many patients.
We have excellent orthopedic coverage, excellent GI coverage.
And
so whenever
we are finding a reason to transfer people
out, we start looking at ways to keep
folks.
One of
the most impressive turnarounds
has been our pediatric program.
And
we are starting to we have had
a 300%
increase in patient days, pediatric patient days? Yes.
In pediatric patient days to take care of
our young ones
in the area. And Doctor. Morris has been
a big part of that
as a local pediatrician.
And he does an excellent job
on the inpatient side as well as
at his office.
And so as an ER doctor
several years ago under the previous
regime,
we were having to transfer all these people
out. And I can't tell you how
hard it is as an ER doctor trying
to transfer out 4 or 5,
8 people in a shift. It takes a
lot of time and resources
and your
emergency department kind of comes to a standstill.
Being able to keep all these people here,
one, is just excellent for patient care.
But 2, it also talks about rebuilding trust
in the community, knowing that people are gonna
have high quality care right here in their
own backyards.
That's amazing to hear. What a you know,
it was great success story in in being
able to, like you said, better serve the
community, have,
closer care for people within Brownwood and the
broader area. And then 2, you know, having
the ability to, for the hospital, just keep
people,
there and be able to serve them there
and become efficient at that type of service
line. And so it's really cool to hear
and see. And I can imagine, you know,
going through the process and looking into,
you know, what will make this most needle
moving has really had a great impact,
on the hospital as well.
Yes. We're very proud of the things that
we've been able to do. The community has
been very supportive, welcomed
Hendrick with open arms.
They had been looking for a consistent
health care provider. And the fact that we
are locally
led,
is a big is a big change for
them. They're not being run out of another
state, but
it's truly locally led.
That's so so important, especially,
within, you know, communities, smaller communities in areas
where
having that local presence and the local leadership
really does make a difference.
Now before we wrap up here, I'm wondering
how are you thinking about growth and patient
experience in the future? What do you really
see as being,
so important for the continued evolution
of the hospital?
We're very excited about the plans that we
have for,
moving forward in 2024.
Our fiscal year just, just started in September.
And so we're excited to have a clean
slate and be able to proceed with our
plans.
As we said, as we have grown
our census,
we have the people to be able to
take care of them, but we are running
out of space.
And so we have a couple of floors
within the hospital that
are not currently being used for patient care.
And so potential projects that we,
are looking towards are
expanding our med surg floor.
Currently, we can take care of 38 patients
on that floor.
And you can imagine as we're adding services
that we have got to
increase the number of inpatient beds and not
have to hold those patients in doctor Ford's
emergency room.
He wants to take care of those emergency
room patients, and so we need to get
those inpatients
up to an inpatient floor.
OB,
maternal services and children's services, is very important
to us as this community
grows.
And so we will be looking at
the possibility of moving that to a different
floor and really renovating that floor to make
it more pediatric friendly,
and be able to expand those services.
And then as doctor Ford talked about our
cardiology services,
we currently have 1,
cath lab. And so the addition of a
second cath lab and supporting services,
for that
cardiologist
cardiology service line is very important. And we
look to
look to expand in that direction as well.
You know, I contribute our success,
to the culture that we've created being a
not for profit organization,
and then truly living,
the mission that we have that's to provide
high quality health care with excellence and compassion,
consistent with the healing ministry of Jesus Christ.
And so that has truly transformed the culture
here, at Hendrick Medical Center in Brownwood.
That's amazing to hear. Doctor Ford, Christa, thank
you so much for joining us on the
podcast today. This has been a fantastic conversation.
I really appreciate you being candid about some
of the different things you've worked on and
the successes you've had and look forward to
connecting with you again in the future.