Beaming at nearly completed 10 bed expansion of the Critical Care Unit at Hendersonville Medical Center is CEO Regina Bartlett, CEO; Director of Critical Care Kim Knight, RN; and Chief Operating Office K.C. Donahey. The new unit is expected to be occupied later this month. Photos by Randy Cline
Record admissions and emergency room visits in 2011 have Hendersonville Medical Center (HMC) officials optimistic about the future as they continue to add new services and address a growing space shortage at the facility.
“We’ve been blessed with great growth, not only in our community, but here at the hospital as well,” said Chief Executive Officer Regina Bartlett. “In 2011, we had a record admissions year with over 4,700 admissions and a record emergency room visit count with over 30,000 ER visits.”
The record pace continued into 2012 with the hospital reporting a new monthly record for both admissions and ER visits in January. Bartlett does see a shift in some economic factors in the patients in lesser insurances, higher co-pays, and higher deductibles, but believes that their focus on service excellence has made all the difference.
“We have had a very concentrated effort over the past few years of really putting all the pieces together,” she explained in a recent interview. “To me it is always about providing excellent service to our patients, our community and our physicians.
“You have got to have the great foundation; the great equipment, the safety measures, and you must have the quality metrics and outcomes. Those are foundational things and we certainly have those and I’m proud of those. But what really sets you apart from those great things, is how you treat people and how you reach out to the community. How you show your patients empathy and caring and compassion. What I believe is that you gain patient loyalty one care experience at a time.”
On the more tangible side, Bartlett said a hospital must have great quality physicians. “That is one thing that we, I feel, do a fabulous job at. We continue to recruit high level, well trained, board certified physicians that live and work right here in this community. I think that is one of the cornerstones. You add to that a well-trained and qualified staff and you have a complete package.”
The hospital employs over 500 employees, making it the fourth largest employer in Sumner County. “We are proud to provide value to the community in good paying jobs, and in state and local income tax,” she said.
HMC recently made provisions for future growth by purchasing 17 acres of property adjacent to the current campus. The newly acquired land borders New Shackle Island and Forest Retreat.
“It came about very unexpectedly,” Bartlett said. “The front part of a 42-acre tract on Forest Retreat became available and we contacted our corporation that handles real estate transactions. The next thing I knew, we were closing on 17 acres.”
Bartlett said the quick approval from the medical center’s parent company, Hospital Corporation of America, is “a great statement about what they see in this community and the commitment they are making here.”
The hospital, which has been operating for more than 30 years, is virtually landlocked so the additional property will be held for future growth, though the exact purpose is not yet known.
“We don’t have any current plans for the land right now but it gives us opportunity for the future and we will need that,” she said. “If we ever had the opportunity to pick up the rest of it, we would certainly be interested in that.”
HMC is licensed for 110 beds, with an additional 38 beds at their Portland campus, which is currently inactive. That facility is used for outpatient services and physician offices. The Hendersonville facility has 81 staffed beds with some original rooms being repurposed for other needs through the years. Bartlett and her staff are looking for any available area for extra bed space.
“We are out of room,” she said, mentioning that some consideration is being given to eventually adding a fourth floor. “We have opened up some auxiliary space adjacent to the ER to try to ease off some of that crunch there where if we have patients that are not highly sick, we can move them to another area, maybe a fast-track type of opportunity.”
The opening of a new critical care expansion will add 10 beds and double the size of the current critical care unit. “This will alleviate some of the capacity issues we’ve been having,” Bartlett said. “When you have record numbers, clearly it’s a challenge. We were approved last year for a $3 million investment to double the size of critical care, from 10 to 20 beds.”
HMC has recently announced several new services available at the hospital including becoming the first community-based hospital in the area to offer Endoscopic Ultrasound (EUS) as a diagnostic tool for its patients. EUS marries endoscopy and ultrasound into one test to get images and information about the esophagus, the stomach, the pancreas and surrounding organs. HMC gastroenterologist William Norris, MD, completed advanced training in EUS at the University of Maryland.
“For a community this size, to have that level gastroenterologist bringing that level of procedure here is pretty fantastic,” Bartlett said.
The hospital has also recently been certified as for their total joint program, going through an accreditation process making it the only facility in northern Middle Tennessee to hold that distinction. “We have nine orthopedic physicians here that does great work and gives us another component to that quality piece of our story,” she said.
Just being released this week is news that HMC has been surveyed to receive a primary stroke certification. “We have been chest pain accredited for many years, and adding primary stoke certification on top of that will do the same thing for people having strokes in community,” Bartlett explained. “Time is as critical for stroke patients as people having acute heart attacks.”
She explained that Dr. Chad Swann, a board certified cardiovascular surgeon, brought a new procedure into the cath lab to put a stent in the abdominal artery for people who have abdominal aneurysms. “If those particular aneurysms were to burst, the chance of mortality is very high,” she said. “The repair has always been surgery with major incisions and all the complications of major surgery. Compare that to going to a cath lab, having a stick in your groin, and having a stent inserted and kind of sealing off the aneurysms. That’s pretty incredible. Those sort of technologies in a community-based hospital sets us apart, for sure.”
Bartlett began her career with HCA almost 34 years ago as a new graduate nurse at Parkridge Medical Center in Chattanooga in 1978. She stayed there for 18 years before moving into administration as Chief Nurse at a hospital in South Pittsburg. Tenn. She first came to HMC in 1998 as Chief Nurse and Operating Officer. She left for a three-year stint at Nashville’s Skyline Medical Center to serve as Chief Operating Officer before returning to HMC as CEO a little over four years ago.
“I fell in love with the community when I first came here and I still love it today,” she said. Bartlett is very involved in the community serving as past chairman of the Hendersonville Chamber of Commerce, a member of the Hendersonville Rotary Club, the incoming chair-elect for the Forward Sumner board, and is serving this year as the campaign chair for the Sumner County United Way.
By Randy Cline |
