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Serving the Community
Rutland Regional Medical Center

by Kim J. Gifford • photos by Caleb Kenna

The Allen Street entrance to Rutland Regional Medical Center is abuzz with activity. A book sale is in progress. Shoppers browse through books and the adjacent gift shop. Patients arrive for appointments. An array of brochures on marrow donation provides an informative display across from the information desk.

Down the corridor, work is underway to create a central registration and new diagnostic imaging center to improve the efficiency of patient flow and upgrade diagnostic equipment and software. Take a turn down the hallway from the information desk and there on the walls hang large poster-size displays of service standards and values all hospital staff must agree to and sign. Their hand-signed signatures surround the printed standards, a testimony to the willingness of all involved to carry out the hospital’s mission to deliver superior service to the community.

Witnessing this active hive, it is easy to imagine Rutland Regional as a living being, one with a very long reach. The medical center consists of a 188-bed hospital and employs over 1,600 professional and support staff including 219 physicians. It serves Rutland County as well as portions of central and southern Vermont and eastern New York. The medical center also services skiers and tourists visiting Killington at the Killington Medical Clinic located at Ramshead Mountain. The plethora of projects Rutland Regional oversees is impressive, a testimony to what CEO Tom Huebner sees as opportunity in this era of healthcare reform. While the healthcare industry embarks on a period of change and uncertainty, Rutland Regional seems to be exploring ways to remain energetic and vital.

“Healthcare right now is going through incredible change. I’ve been working in hospitals and healthcare for 38 years and I’ve never seen a period of as much uncertainty that currently exists led by all the healthcare reform efforts on both the national and state levels,” said Huebner. “My point of view is it’s a wonderful opportunity, a wonderful time to be innovative and trying new things while obviously not losing sight of our mission to provide great care to our community…If we just do it the way we’ve always done it, we will not be successful and quite frankly not meet the community’s needs. I find it invigorating, fun, interesting, anything but boring.”

The vibrancy and change apparent at the Allen Street entrance serves as a microcosm of what Huebner has expressed. He calls the central registration and DI (diagnostic imaging) core project “ a very concrete way” in which Rutland Regional is trying to meet the needs of the community. Priscilla Latkin, communication specialist, explains that the new central registration will make it more convenient for patients by providing one central place to check in as opposed to having to register in one area for blood work and then going to a separate area to register for x-ray. “This will allow patients and their families to come into one place and check in one time and will offer families one area to wait in or return to if they should decide to visit the food court etc.,” Latkin said.

Rutland Regional’s recent lease of land to Green Mountain Power (GMP) to build a 150-kilowat solar center is another way the institution is participating in the greater community. “We will be helping GMP provide solar energy to Rutland and it will in turn help us cut some of our utility costs,” said Latkin.

West Ridge Center for Addiction Recovery
Some of the ways Rutland Regional serves the community are large-scale and obvious such as the recent establishment of the West Ridge Center for Addiction Recovery, while others are less noticeable. “We offer a lot of human touches,” said Huebner. He cites the example of a new process for interacting with patients that they call by the acronym “AIDET.” It requires staff to acknowledge patients by name, introduce themselves, discuss the duration of the exam, explain the reason for it, and thank them for choosing Rutland Regional.

“We’ve been watching the staff doing this everyday and it is a miraculous moment that occurs,” said Huebner. “A very big push for us is that we dramatically improve the customer service experience of patients.”

The West Ridge Center for Addiction Recovery has been a long time in the making. “Rutland Regional has been working with the state to bring a center into Rutland County for about 10 years,” said Latkin.

The center is modeled after Howard Mental Health Services in Burlington and provides a multi-disciplinary clinic where patients come not only to receive their dosage, but also mental health counseling and exams. “We are here to try and help people with more than just the dosage they need. The goal is to get them to full recovery,” said Latkin.

Huebner notes that when he started in the field 23 years ago substance abuse was not the problem it is today, “but pretending it doesn’t exist isn’t what we need to be doing. We need to create ways to deal with the issue and provide treatment options for that portion of the community. It serves all the community if we do that,” he said.

More New Initiatives — Walking Loop and Dayroom Project
Visitors to Rutland Regional need look no further than the outdoor walking loop to see one of the institution’s latest attempts to serve the community. The walking loop is only a quarter of a mile long and open to the entire community, making it easy for even the less active to get out and take a quick walk. Recently, the medical center added five weather-resistant apparatuses to the loop so that people can even enjoy them during the wintertime. “Pretty much anyone over the age of 10 can use them safely,” said Latkin. There are stations for sit ups, pull ups, push ups, stretching and one for improving mobility and stability.

Rutland Regional’s new dayroom program is another way in which the medical center is being innovative. It recently introduced the new program in conjunction with the medical oncology unit on the fifth floor. Historically the fifth floor dayroom served as a place to “provide supervision and focused activities to the geriatric and altered cognitive patient population,” said Samantha Helinski, director of Nursing Medical Oncology Unit, but this past June they expanded this mission to offer “stimulating companionship and patient-focused holistic care to all patients facing an extended stay at the hospital. The space is open to patients who are not on telemetry and are able to be out of their hospital room.

“A hospital room can get small and isolating,” explained Huebner. “The dayroom provides patients with more interaction so they are not just isolated in their rooms all day long. We realize it is also clinically important; patients recover better if they are kept active.”

Not only does the dayroom have a kitchenette allowing for meals and snacks family-style, but it also offers the opportunity for games, puzzles, crafts, reading, music, pet therapy and Reiki. Families are also allowed to visit patients there. “It is much more cheerful and engaging than the traditional hospital room setting,” said Helinski.

Starting Conversations about Health
Some of the medical center’s most innovative programs stem from the ideas of staff and even patients. When emergency department nurse David Wallstrom decided to grow a mustache, he got the medical center involved in the “Movember” campaign. During the month of November men grow a “mo” or mustache for 30 days in an effort to spread awareness of men’s health issues such as prostate and testicular cancer. Wallstrom says his mustache indeed got people talking.

“If you are able to have a conversation at the dinner table about prostate cancer, testicular cancer or whatever else, it makes it more acceptable to have that conversation in public,” he said. “Women have done a very good job of getting the message out. You can talk about breast cancer everywhere.”

A new cancer support group aimed at a younger demographic was launched at the hospital after a young woman with cancer suggested it to the oncology social worker Jessica Greco.

“Young adulthood is a time when most people are finishing their education, focusing on their career, dating and starting a family. When a young adult gets cancer they are faced with different concerns such as how they will pay for treatment-related expenses, and how to maintain and make new social relationships,” Greco said. “It’s important to recognize that young adults have unique circumstances related to lifestyle, work, school, family life and emotional development.”

From the flurry of activity in the medical center’s corridors to the range of new projects and programs it is regularly instituting, it is easy to see that Rutland Regional is enthusiastically embracing Huebner’s belief that the current healthcare environment provides unique opportunities for growth and service to the community and the medical center’s broad mission.

“In the face of all the change that is going on in healthcare we are trying to embrace it and continue to serve our community in different and unique ways,” Huebner concluded. “We need to be here for the long haul to care for our community and to do it in the new world that is emerging.”

Freelance writer Kim J. Gifford resides in Bethel, VT with her pugs Alfie and Waffles. Kim is also a memoir writing instructor at Lebanon College in Lebanon, NH and produces her own line of pug-related greeting cards. She also has a new website devoted to these photogenic canines: http://www.pugsandpics.com/

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