Good Shepherd highlights work during annual community meeting

Published 9:00 am Monday, November 2, 2020

Good Shepherd Health Care System’s annual community meeting highlighted the ups and downs of an unusual year for the hospital and its clinics.

For many community members, this year’s virtual presentation was the first opportunity to get to know Brian Sims, who took over as CEO on Oct. 1. Sims said previous CEO Dennis Burke’s advocacy for rural hospitals had made him a well-known figure among hospital administrators in other parts of the country — including Sims, who previously managed a hospital in Iowa.

“To have the opportunity to follow Dennis and lead one of the best-known critical access hospitals in the nation is one of the greatest honors of my professional life,” he said.

After the state required hospitals to cancel nonemergency procedures in the spring during the pandemic’s first lockdown, Sims said Good Shepherd Medical Center’s patient days were down by 24% during the 2019-20 fiscal year.

However, he said outpatient visits were up by 6.3% and clinic visits, including urgent care, were up by 8.7% in 2019-20. Emergency room visits stayed roughly the same.

During his presentation, Sims encouraged people not to put off medical care.

“As a personal plea, I’m going to ask you, if you have not been going to the doctor because of coronavirus, I’m going to ask you to go,” he said. “It is safe. We will take care of you.”

The hospital has made adjustments for the pandemic, including preparing a special COVID-19 unit for patients with the virus and setting up an incident command center. According to the written annual report accompanying Sims’ presentation, as of the report’s publication the hospital had conducted 5,404 COVID-19 tests and employees had worked 14,672 hours related to COVID-19 care.

“The pandemic has brought many challenges with it and even spotlighted holes and gaps in supply chains, processes, staffing, financials and even facility space, should we see an influx of patients,” the report stated. “GSHCS has had to rethink things and get creative in order to meet the needs of a potential patient surge during the pandemic.”

Despite those challenges, Sims shared new projects and programs the hospital was still able to complete as planned.

During the past fiscal year, the hospital opened up a cancer center and began offering oncology services in December 2019. The hospital also completed an expansion of its cardiopulmonary rehab center in April 2020, and remodeled some of its departments, including its urgent care clinic. According to the hospital’s annual report, Good Shepherd installed a total of 108 new pieces of medical equipment throughout its health care system in 2019-20.

The hospital’s Physical Medicine & Rehabilitation Center, focused on pain management, opened in June. Services it offers range from chiropractics and physical therapy to headache injections. Sims said looking toward the future, they are planning a “strong” industrial medicine program, geared toward preventing and treating worker injuries.

Construction on the space for Good Shepherd Sleep Solutions was recently completed, and Sims said the sleep center will open in November.

The hospital recruited 10 physicians in the past year and has plans to add more to the GSHCS staff, which now totals more than 750 employees. Sims thanked the staff, and also the hospital’s volunteers. He said the volunteers have been limited this year in the time they have been able to spend on campus, but they have still pitched in in other ways, including sewing cloth masks for employees and raising money for the hospital’s charitable foundation.