Jones Memorial Hospital: Ambitious Agenda
Hospitals
Written by Michelle Rivera   
Monday, 01 October 2007
Jones Memorial Hospital: Ambitious Agenda - Health Executive - RedCoat Publishing
Eva Benedict talks about what this hospital is doing to maintain its status as a premier facility in a rural region.
Eva Benedict has a history with Wellsville, NY’s Jones Memorial Hospital, and that helped ensure a smooth transition when she was named permanent CEO this June. Benedict has been part of the hospital family for more than 25 years, and prior to accepting the interim CEO position in December 2006, she was the hospital’s vice president of patient services.

Jones Memorial Hospital: Ambitious Agenda - Health Executive - RedCoat Publishing
Eva Benedict, CEO
As part of her new role, Benedict and her administrative team laid out an ambitious agenda for the months ahead that includes strengthening connections with the community, securing the hospital’s financial status, and attracting new physicians to the hospital.

“The community has always been wonderfully supportive of the hospital, but as a rural hospital in the state of New York, we have some financial challenges,” Benedict said. “We are often faced with tough decisions when determining where to spend our scarce resources—we need to maintain financial viability to ensure we’ll continue to serve as a community hospital for years to come.”

Benedict said the community has been generous in partnering with the hospital to fund programs that don’t generally stand on their own. For example, the Wellsville Lions Club was instrumental in securing grant funds and donations for the diabetes center located on the main floor of the hospital. “Opening the center would have been difficult without the start-up money from the club,” she said.

Hub and spoke
Providing patients with the services of a specialist can be a major challenge for a rural hospital, Benedict said. One of the ways Jones Memorial has answered this challenge for stroke patients is by participating in the telemedicine program at Millard Fillmore Gates Hospital in Buffalo, part of the Kaleida Health System. Based on a hub-and-spoke concept, the services of neurologists in Buffalo (the hub) can be accessed by patients in Wellsville, one of the spokes.

The program is supported by the state of New York and the Department of Health. “Strokes aren’t a high volume diagnosis for our facility,” Benedict said. “But the treatment of strokes is incredibly time sensitive and requires specialties that are not available in a community of this size.” Participation in this initiative required an investment in the infrastructure, hardware, and processes that will support the community’s access to those specialties via a computer and camera with two-way communication.

“We have access to neurologists and neurosurgeons that we would not otherwise have had access to immediately,” Benedict said, noting that the possibility of using this technology in other specialty areas, such as dermatology, made the investment even more appealing. “The financial pay-off may not happen right away,” Benedict said, “But this technology provides our community healthcare benefits that are crucial for the long term.”

Jones Memorial Hospital also purchased a PACS this year, allowing the review and interpretation of medical imaging studies to be done remotely. This technology has given the patients in this rural area access to radiology specialists with the click of a mouse. “We feel it’s our responsibility as a rural healthcare facility to keep our patients connected with the experts in tertiary centers when they need expertise not available locally,” said Benedict.

Area of attraction
One of Jones Memorial Hospital’s biggest challenges has been the recruitment and retention of physicians. “Most of our primary care physicians are nearing the point in their careers when they would like to modify their practices to allow better balance between work life and personal time,” Benedict said. “And many of the new physicians coming into primary care are looking for a more balanced lifestyle than the physicians of 25 years ago, which creates a challenge for hospital administrators.”

To help physicians achieve this balance, Benedict and her team are evaluating a 24/7 hospitalist program. “We have a hospitalist program in place, but it has limited hours,” she explained. “With the new program, we’ll be able to provide our physicians the support they need while facilitating physician recruitment and retention.”

As the leader of a community hospital, Benedict is also working with community leaders, as well as the chamber of commerce, to figure out ways to promote the community as an attractive location for professionals. “We are a small town in a rural setting, and that isn’t for everyone,” she said. “But the area has some definite advantages we should be promoting.”

One of the keys to attracting people to this area is marketing the region’s hunting, fishing, and hiking activities, as well as its beautiful green hills and the low cost of living. “Allegany County offers the best of both worlds: a small-town community and the beauty of a rural area within an hour and a half of two major metropolitan areas,” Benedict said.

Opening doors
To keep its relationship with the community strong, Jones Memorial Hospital participates in many community events and makes a concerted effort to be a representative in as many health forums as possible. This past spring, shortly after Benedict’s appointment as interim CEO, the hospital hosted an executive health forum, inviting business leaders, healthcare providers, and local politicians and representatives to discuss the healthcare needs of the community.

The forum was extremely successful in opening the doors of communication and getting the word out as to what Jones Memorial Hospital has to offer. “This was the first time Jones Memorial has hosted an event like this, and the participants voiced a desire to meet regularly,” said Benedict.

Benedict and her team also invested a great deal this last year in patient safety, including 35 new hospital beds designed to prevent bedrail entrapments and bariatric equipment to assist hospital employees when working with patients of size. “We have a significant diabetic population here that is often coupled with obesity issues,” Benedict explained.

“One of our strengths is the leadership of this hospital—the administrative team and the board of directors,” Benedict concluded. “They have the foresight to invest in our organization and the technology to connect us with the expertise we need to provide quality healthcare for our community.”
 
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