We're a hospital very similar to CoxHealth and St. John's, except in size and focus. (Our focus is) specialized acute care - ventilator weaning, hemodialysis, infection, wound care, patients who have had some kind of neurological injury and patients who are medically complex. Our capacity is 44 patients, and we have about 150 employees. Select Medical Corp. is based in Mechanicsburg, Pa., and ... has about 90 hospitals in 26 states.
What's your role as CEO?
I've been a nurse for 39 years. I think everything I do is nursing. Select ... has a lot of nurses in administrative roles ... and they give a lot of autonomy. I have the ability to sit down with patients and families and talk about decisions regarding their care. If they have a problem or any kind of concern or complaint, I have the ability to get involved. I do education with (patients). I've had a lot of talks with patients and families about end-of-life decision-making. We have a lot of students working through here, so I feel a huge professional responsibility to be involved with (their) education.
What is your patient demographic?
About 40 percent of our patients are on ventilators and are being weaned from the ventilators. We target ... things that need longer-term treatment. We also have patients who have brain injuries and don't (yet) have the ability to go to inpatient rehabilitation, because they can't tolerate three hours of therapy a day. Our youngest patient was 14 and our oldest patient was 90-something.
What's the average length of stay for your patients?
It should be 25 days or greater, and that's a Medicare rule ... for us to be a long-term acute care hospital. That does not apply to patients who are on other pay sources, so we might get somebody in here who's on Medicaid (or private insurance) and take care of them for 10 days. Right now, our rate is about 26 or 27 days.
What's one of your biggest challenges as CEO?
There's a lot of misconceptions about what this hospital is. People have driven by, but sometimes, they don't even notice us. Some people think it's a nursing home, or a place where people go to die. It's none of those things.
How do you combat those misconceptions?
We try not to use the term long-term acute-care hospital, because when we say long-term, people automatically think of long-term care as in nursing home care.
Beyond size and focus, how is Select Specialty different from other hospitals?
Our environment is more high-touch than the short-term, acute-care hospitals. Any discussion that we do about a patient takes place at the patient's point of care ..., at the bedside so that the patient and the family hear everything. We're also radical about never doing anything to separate a patient and the family. If family wants to be here 24 hours a day, seven days a week ... they can come and go as they please.
Has Select been widely accepted by Springfield's medical community?
Yes. We have an open medical staff and have enjoyed great relationships with physicians. We want to give them a good experience here so that they feel like their patients are well cared for and safe. We have two outstanding health systems here. We get about equal numbers of referrals from both (CoxHealth and St. John's), and we have excellent physicians in this community. They've been very supportive.
Tell us about your family and hobbies.
I have six children and 15 grandchildren, and my youngest grandchild is 5 months old, and the oldest is 17 years old. I have two sons and four grandchildren who live in town. My husband, Doug, works for Temperature Control. We go to Wesley United Methodist Church, and I sing in the choir and teach a young adult Sunday School class. My parents live here, too.
Interview by Features Editor Maria Hoover.[[In-content Ad]]
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