Central Peninsula Hospital: Conduit of Care
Hospitals
Written by Amanda Gaines   
Thursday, 31 January 2008
Central Peninsula Hospital: Conduit of Care - Health Executive - RedCoat Publishing
Ryan Smith explains how this community hospital brings quality and compassionate healthcare to its region.
The value of human compassion is immeasurable. The administrators at Alaskan Central Peninsula Hospital understand this, which is why, when designing the hospital’s recent $50 million expansion, they implemented the Planetree model across all 90,000 square feet of additional space.

Central Peninsula Hospital: Conduit of Care - Health Executive - RedCoat Publishing
Ryan Smith, CEO
But Planetree is not new to the primary care facility. In 2003, CPH became the first hospital in Alaska to become a Planetree affiliate and has since reduced employee turnover and improved its Press Ganey ranking from below the 10th percentile to over the 90th. The now-completed two-story Mountain Tower, which includes clinical amenities such as 50 private patient rooms, an expanded ICU, new surgical and recovery suites, and an expanded cardio-pulmonary/sleep lab therapy area, includes design elements aligned with the Planetree PhD: personalizing, humanizing, and demystifying the healthcare experience.

“Our alignment with Planetree led us to work with Aesthetics, Inc. out of California when designing the Mountain Tower,” said Ryan Smith, CEO of CPH. “They guided the development of our art and incorporated a stained glass piece designed by an artist from nearby Homer, Alaska into the new sanctuary.”

Out of the $50 million allotted to facilities improvement, $10 million will go to renovating and expanding the hospital’s ED. According to Smith, patient privacy will be just as much of a focus in this renovation as it was when building the Mountain Tower. “Our patients haven’t had the level of privacy they need from an ED,” he said. “The new ED will have all private rooms, and we’re adding a separate trauma room.”

The Mountain Tower was presented to the Kenai Peninsula community in January 2007, and the ED completion date is projected to be May 2008. But even without the physical projects, said Bonnie Nichols, public relations director, patients can tell CPH is a Planetree facility as soon as they walk through the doors. “Our volunteers have excelled in developing new programs at the hospital, whether they be hand massages for the patients, developing a No One Dies Alone program, or creating patient comfort boxes with supplies for our geriatric patients who are here long term,” she said. “The spiritual care at this hospital is amazing.”

In addition, two CPH employees were recognized by at the 2007 national Planetree Conference Awards Ceremony. Emergency physician John Kasukonis was awarded the Planetree Physician Champion Award for his efforts in reminding his fellow physicians of the importance of spirituality in healthcare. Spiritual care coordinator Meg Zerbinos was awarded the Spirit of Caring Award for her skill and dedication in guiding the Planetree Spiritual Care programs.

Access for all
Throughout 2004 and 2005, a federal provision was paid to Alaskan physicians as a reward for taking on new Medicare patients. The provision was used as a guideline to judge Medicare patient accessibility to primary care physicians. But in January 2006, the provision went away, taking between 30% and 40% of the Medicare reimbursement away from the participating private practices.

Since then, patient access to primary care has steadily declined as the number of physicians able to accept new Medicare patients shrinks. “We’ve reached a critical point,” Smith said. “We’re not quite at crisis mode, but we’re in a serious access-issue mode.”

An important element of the Planetree philosophy is developing a healthy community by working with community partners to promote the health and wellness of the community at large. So it’s easy to understand why the administration at CPH has started developing initiatives, in conjunction with the hospital’s medical staff and board of directors, to solve the issue of providing access to primary care for all residents on the peninsula.

CPH has already made proposals to its board to start provider-based rural health clinics that will open the doors to federal funds for Medicare reimbursement, said Smith. “We’re considering employing primary care physicians to guarantee access for all patients. With the independent affiliations we have with the medical staff now, patient access is not always guaranteed.” The hospital is also working with a local federally qualified health center, Cottonwood Health Center, to recruit family practitioners.

“The hospital is directing income-guaranteed physicians into a federally qualified health center to help recruit additional practitioners willing to see all patients of the peninsula,” he said. “Until the problem is solved, access to primary care will be a major issue for us.”

One step further
Throughout 2007, CPH worked with its board of directors and Stroudwater Associates, a healthcare consulting firm headquartered in Maine, to prepare its strategic plan. Part of the process included redefining the hospital’s mission and vision.

The revised mission, to be a community- initiated and community-nurtured organization dedicated to the promotion of wellness and clinical excellence, aligns with the hospital’s Planetree culture. It’s vision to become a regional medical center puts an added focus on the $50 million expansion project.

The strategic initiative also involves intense market focus and medical staff alignment regarding the development of specialty services. The Stroud water report showed more than 20% of adults in the region do not have health insurance, mainly due to seasonal employment, despite having a higher occurrence of diabetes, respiratory disease, asthma, and depression than many other areas in the US.

“We’ve done service line planning for oncology, cardiology, and mental health because those services are in great demand,” said Smith. “Our previous leadership laid the groundwork for us to take on these strategic initiatives, and we’re ready to take it one step further.”
 
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