The health center in hard-hit Washington state desperately seeks supplies essential to coping with the inevitable.

Source: ‘We’ll improvise’: A resource-starved rural hospital steels itself for coronavirus’s arrival

Many are concerned about the coronavirus (COVID-19). It’s important to know most with COVID-19 have very mild symptoms, some none at all. If you’re feeling ill and have mild symptom like a low-grade fever and/or persistent cough, please isolate yourself at home for your recovery. If you need more information, please call Columbia County Public Health Department 509-382-2181.

However, if you feel you need care, please call your primary healthcare provider. If you don’t have a primary healthcare provider, please call the Columbia Family Clinic 509-382-3200 or the Waitsburg Clinic 509-337-6311. We will ask a series of questions so we may make arraignments for your arrival. Please wear a mask if you have one. Please only use the Emergency Department if you are having trouble breathing or have severe symptoms. For urgent medical needs please call 911 and describe your symptoms clearly.

A collaboration between UW and Dayton, population 2,500, is changing how Washington brings mental health care to rural communities.

Source: A small team in southeast Washington is leading the charge in telepsychiatry

These hospitals can mean the difference between life and death.

Source: One-third of Washington’s rural hospitals are at risk. What will happen if they close?

Christopher Davis was lying on the floor watching cartoons one night last December while his mother, Beverly, decorated her Spokane home for Christmas.

Source: Families, advocates sound alarm over patients stuck in the hospital without a medical need

Rural medical facilities such as those in Walla Walla and Columbia counties face a number of challenges, one of which is a critical shortage of doctors opting to practice in

Source: Rural health systems work on recruitment puzzle

Angela Trenti was recently featured on Blue Mountain TV to discuss our wound care program; this segment included a testimonial from one of our patients Mr. Dave Hale who discussed how both our swing bed program and our wound care program helped him. We appreciate Dave’s participation and for providing permission, allowing us to tell his story.

Thank you Blue Mountain Television for bringing your team to our facility and for spending the time to help us tell this story. Blue Mountain TV

Columbia County Health System is a 2019 Intalere Healthcare Achievement Award Winner. Cheryl Skiffington and her materials management team of Chris Davis and Matt Ott won the Supply Chain/Data Management or Supply Cost Efficiencies Award for Our Materials Management Redesign Project. Congratulations to this great team as they have worked hard to improve efficiency and decrease inventory costs through better management!

Members of our revenue cycle team participated in a high performing team building exercise; we brought our complete revenue cycle back in-house in 2018 after having outsourced it since 2010. Members of this team are both patient centered and have set high standards for themselves. Notes from the meeting indicated the characteristics of a high performing team: Mutual Respect, Resilient, Compassion, Shared goals, Trust, Can depend on each other, Confident in self and team, Growth, Smart/knowledgeable/skilled, Engaged, Efficient, Accountability/Takes ownership, Awareness of others, Resolves issues, Shared values, Passionate, High expectations, Compassionate, Shared vision, and Knows mission.

As financial pressures have forced scores of small-town nursing homes to shut down, their residents often must relocate far from their families to find care.

Source: Nursing Homes Are Closing Across Rural America, Scattering Residents

Many facilities are using nostalgic environments as a means of soothing the misery, panic, and rage their residents experience.

Source: The Comforting Fictions of Dementia Care

KING 5’s Amity Addrisi reports.

Source: Telepsychiatry brings help to rural areas

 

National Rural Health Association: The Problem: Rural hospitals are closing where patient populations are most vulnerable; rural patients and rural economies suffer.

NRHA: Click to Read More

Talk to almost any primary care physician these days and what you’ll hear should frighten you. Many PCPs are actively looking for ways to get out of primary care, and there’s no one to replace them because medical students don’t want to go into primary care. One well-known reason for this is that PCPs are being forced to spend more time dealing with the administrative burdens of dysfunctional EHRs, measurement programs, and health plan rules than taking care of patients.

But there’s another reason that nobody is talking about, and it may be an even bigger threat to the future of primary care.

The Hidden Flaw in “Value-Based Payment” Programs ….. (click to read entire article)

Improving Healthcare Quality and Reforming Healthcare Payment Systems

It’s unlikely that the state of Washington intended to put its skilled nursing facilities on the brink of disaster when it overhauled its Medicaid system in 2016, but leaders of both LeadingAge Washington and the Washington Health Care Association (WHCA) said that’s exactly what has occurred as providers across the state try to keep their Read More

Source: Low Medicaid Rates Cause Skilled Nursing Crisis in Washington State – Skilled Nursing News