Buck Taylor states he thinks there has been too much secrecy

By Lauren Brown
Burns Times-Herald

With the beginning of a new fiscal year came change to the Harney Hospital District Board at the July 22 meeting.

The board bid farewell to Carolyn Bauer and Anne Clark and welcomed new members Buck Taylor and Len Arntz, who were sworn in along with returning board member Sam Caizza.

Taylor addressed the board and the audience by saying, “I personally didn’t want this job a year ago.” However, after a few letters to the editor, he received so much community feedback that he felt he needed to run for the board. He said he felt there was too much secrecy regarding the board and how much information is allowed to be publicized.

“As a board we are a conduit between the public and the (hospital) administration,” he said. He went on to say that he didn’t feel the board has always been aware of some of the problems within the hospital.

“You can learn from past mistakes,” he said.

The board went on to nominate Tim Smith as Chairman, Sam Caizza as Treasurer and Shana Withee as Secretary.

In other business:

• Chief Executive Officer Jim Bishop said that the hospital has come to an agreement with the Veteran’s Administration (VA) on a lease agreement for the Racine Building.

There is some additional paperwork that needs to be completed, but the remodeling of the Racine Building (paid for by the VA) will likely start sometime in August and could cost in the neighborhood of $400,000. FHCI, a contractor out of Redmond, got the bid for the project;

• Chief Clinical Officer Ron Wulff noted that the hospital has been hit recently with some malicious computer viruses. He said their tech specialist John Stinnett is working hard to fix the problem and strengthen the hospital security measures. They also instituted some new policies to discourage employees from randomly surfing the Web on hospital computers;

• Tammy Carroll who works in the Environmental Services Department of the Hospital gave a presentation on the work her department does in cleaning up the hospital.

Board member Withee said, “I think your department needs to be commended.” She noted that though the new building is a year old, the hospital still looks brand new thanks to the Environmental Services staff.

• Bishop notified the board that Catherine White was promoted to Chief Financial Officer under a revised structure for the Financial and Health Information Management areas of the hospital. The restructuring eliminates one and half positions and will save $125,000 annually;

• Bishop also said that the attorneys are still in talks regarding the result of the Skanska arbitration, so the arbitrator has yet to issue a written opinion on the matter. He said he would notify the board once he obtained the written decision;

• Community Health Improvement Partnership (CHIP) coordinator Cody Hodges told the board about the results of the Harney County Health Future forum, a community-wide visioning meeting held on July 9 at the Harney County Senior and Community Services Center. The CHIP committee conducted face to face interviews with all 77 attendees to find out the community’s top health related priorities.

Top vote getters included aggressive provider recruitment issues, health prevention and wellness strategies, cancer and/or dialysis treatment, opening a nursing home, more specialists, spray for mosquitoes and public health issues.

The next step in the process for the CHIP committee is to research the issues and develop alternatives and strategies;

• Chief Nursing Officer (CNO) Barb Chambers said that the nursing division has recently undergone some restructuring.

Nursing will be reduced from five nurse managers to one Assistant Chief Nurse Officer (ACNO). The CNO and the ACNO will provide leadership for all nursing departments including Surgical Services. In addition, the Charge Nurses will fulfill their role as per the contract and become a frontline shift coordinator of nursing activities in all departments as well as surgery.

Chambers noted that a Nurse Educator position will be added, but that it would not be a management position. It will ensure consistency of competencies and nursing approach to patient care.

The resulting restructuring will save the hospital $300,000 in salaries, excluding benefits;

• Dr. Kevin Johnston stated that the recently held trauma conference was very well received among the hospital staff.

He also said that they recently met with staff at Harney Behavioral Health (HBH) and talked about how the two staffs can work together on patient care.

The next Harney District Hospital Board meeting will be at 6 p.m. Aug. 26 in the board conference room at the hospital.