Smyth County Community Hospital

Causes: General Hospitals, Health

Mission: Part i, line i - organization's mission: smyth county community hospital (scch) is committed to bringing loving care to health care. We exist to identify and respond to the health care needs of individuals and communities in our region and to assist them in attaining their highest possible level of health.

Programs: Smyth county community hospital (scch) has a 55-plus year history of providing healthcare services within the community of marion, virginia. Scch is a 44-bed community-based hospital that offers both acute care and inpatient rehabilitation care. The hospital provides comprehensive outpatient services and a variety of outreach programs such as homecare. Additionally, scch has a 109-bed nursing care facility, francis marion manor health and rehabilitation (fmm). Fmm provides both skilled-level and nursing facility-level health care services. (continued on schedule o) (continued) for the year ending june 30, 2017, scch recorded 1,426 inpatient hospital admissions and 318 nursing home admissions. There were 77,566 outpatient visits, 17,535 emergency visits and 11,141 home health visits. To help fight the opioid abuse epidemic in southwest virginia, scch partnered with community providers and pharmacists to create a pharmacy task force. The task force approached the smyth county hospital healthtrust with the idea to install drug take-back boxes at local law enforcement agencies. Over 5,000 was donated to purchase three boxes that were placed inside two local police departments and the local sheriff's office. Scch was recognized by us senator mark warner for our efforts in providing training to physicians and pharmacists, creating prescription drug take- back boxes, calling for the establishment of a drug consortium, and making a positive impact in combating the opioid epidemic. Our triumph cancer navigator program celebrated its 1-yr anniversary and has expanded its scope to cover all types of cancer. The program is designed to support cancer patients and their families, advocate for the patient, and to help coordinate the patient's care throughout the continuum of treatment - from diagnosis to survivorship. There is no charge for these services regardless of whether a patient chooses to receive their treatment at scch or an unrelated facility. We have three navigators serving scch's service area to include breast, neck/head & other cancers; lung, gi and other; and, a navigator that provides community-wide services (attends local civic, women's groups, schools, etc. To provide education relative to cancer and available resources). Those that join the program receive one- on-one assistance from specially trained oncology professionals. Our cancer navigators communicate with the patient's doctor, will coordinate transportation, set up appointment reminders and provide emotional support for both the patient and the patient's family. Our navigators will also coordinate support services such as treatment planning, prosthesis selection, nutrition counseling, and identification of resources for spiritual care, financial assistance and other needs. Our navigators participate in community events such as health fairs, cancer education events, and cancer support groups. They visit physician offices, seniors' groups, attend meetings with local business organizations, and they work with many other organizations to explain the navigation program and provide cancer awareness/education through the community. The program has made an impact, with the triumph program receiving a patient satisfaction score of 93. With financial assistance from a usda rural development grant, mountain states health alliance (msha) established a telemedicine network connecting icu doctors at johnson city medical center (msha's flagship hospital) with the system's six rural hospitals, including scch. Specialists at jcmc are able to conduct real-time consultations with patients and caregivers in the icu at our rural hospitals. Many patients in rural towns do not have cars or disposable income to spend on gas, meals or lodging to come to jcmc for care, so telemedicine brings the care to them. This new service is projected to serve about 5,000 patients per year. The usda grant is one of the usda's distance learning and telemedicine projects. The hospital subsidized a physician clinic located in a rural, medically underserved area. The clinic allows residents to receive quality care without having to travel outside of their home area. This is especially important for elderly residents and others that require family or friends to provide transportation to physician appointments. Our cost during the year to subsidize the clinic was 126,950. Mountain states health alliance is one of only 32 organizations in the country that were chosen recently to be part of the u. S. Centers for medicare & medicaid services' (cms) new program aimed at improving the health of medicare and medicaid beneficiaries. The new program - cms' accountable health communities (ahc) model - will seek to improve the overall health of medicare and medicaid beneficiaries by helping to address patients' health-related social needs. The program seeks to bridge the gap between clinical and community service providers to address issues such as housing instability, food insecurity, utility needs, interpersonal violence and transportation. Mountain states will serve as the bridge organization for the project locally, leading a collaborative with multiple other organizations and care sites to bring the needed services to beneficiaries who live in southwest virginia. The virginia department of medical assistance services will also partner in the program. The ahc model provides federal funding to hire patient navigators, along with additional support staff who will be located at community services boards throughout southwest virginia. All of mountain states' virginia hospitals, including smyth county community hospital, will participate in the new region-wide program. The united states department of health and human services made the selection near the end of our fiscal year so we were in the very early stage of planning at june 30, 2017. Based on community need, scch incurred direct expense of 160,798 to recruit physicians into our community. In addition, msha corporate allocates a portion of its physician recruitment departmental expenses since that department services all msha divisions, including scch. Physicians are recruited to replace physicians that retire or leave the area. According to the association of american medical colleges, physician retirement is the primary factor behind the physician shortage in the u. S. About one-third of currently practicing physicians will be at least 65 years old within the next decade. Our recruitment expense during fy17 included recruitment for primary care, pain medicine & rehabilitation, general surgery, urgent care, and nurse practitioners. All physician recruitment activities are based on documented community need. A portion of our recruitment is physician debt forgiven by the hospital over a period of years as a physician remains in our community and continues providing medical services to our residents. This past year francis marion manor health & rehabilitation replaced 95 of its 109 beds with fully electric, state-of-the-art beds specifically designed for skilled care. Two of the replaced beds were donated to the smyth career and technology center with the smyth county school system and one bed was kept at the manor for use in training cna students. We host programs within the community that provide health education to both health professionals and the general public. For example, we hosted a breast cancer awareness event, a heart health event, and a cancer educational program at our cancer center. We also participated in a local senior expo. Scch, along with the smyth county hospital healthtrust and the smyth county health department, hosted a free health fair for local law enforcement agents in the county. The all-day event provided officers a variety of screenings free of charge, including lab work, vision, sleep, various vaccinations including flu shots, blood pressure and bmi checks, and more. Guests were able to spend time with health care providers and ask questions about their results or other health concerns. Msha's new health it immersion program offers clinical insight for information system (is) team members. The program offers is team members the opportunity to shadow clinical team members in the field. By walking alongside nurses, providers and other clinical and ancillary team members, participants gain a better working relationship with the clinicians in the field. This allows is team members to gain a greater insight and experience with clinical workflows, roles and settings. Host sites this year included scch and five more msha hospitals, an urgent care center, and internal medicine and cardiology physician practices. The teams discussed the applications clinical teams use regularly and the workflows that surround them; the best time for planned outages; formal downtime procedures; the best way to communicate between is and clinical areas; and who is impacted by technology changes. Scch continues the "lean" process of providing value to customers (our p

francis marion manor health and rehabilitation (fmm), provides both skilled-level and nursing facility-level health care services. There were 318 admissions and 35,089 patient days during fy17.