Prowers Medical Center Hosts Community Kick-Off Event

Lamar Fire Department and Med Trans Ambulance Displayed during May Health Fair

The entire Prowers County Community is invited to a Community Kick-Off Event, Monday, May 19 at 5pm at the Cultural Events Center.  A question and answer session regarding the hospital’s expansion plans will begin at 5pm.  Prowers Medical Center plans to break ground in late summer, 2014.

Representatives from the Design Build firm and the Financial Advisor for the project will join the PMC Board of Directors and members of the Hospital Management Team to answer questions and review conceptual images of the Plan Design.

At approximately 6pm, the Prowers Medical Center Board of Directors will convene to approve the final project documents including passing a resolution to approve a bond to finance the expansion plans.  Light refreshments will be served.

Hospital Chief Executive Officer, Craig Loveless, met with the Prowers County Commissioners in Holly during their regular meeting last Tuesday, May 13 to provide an update on hospital activities including the May 19 open house which will showcase plans for physical therapy, emergency room services and other expansion plans.

Loveless said a national comparative study in 2013 by the American Hospital Association indicated that rural hospital service leads their urban or city counterparts in several areas including basic quality of healthcare, costs and outcome of treatment, safety and  shorter waiting periods for emergency services.  PMC, he said, comes in under state costs per patient, on the average, for health care.

Loveless told the commissioners that Prowers Medical Center is also ahead of schedule on several federally mandated health service programs including code implementation known as ICD 10.  “Unfortunately, the U.S. is lagging behind other major countries in the world,” he explained, but he said PMC is advancing beyond national deadlines.  “The diagnosis codes are becoming more definitive which will help improve a patient’s health status and applied treatment,” he said.  Instead of merely noting that a patient is receiving treatment for a fall, a more comprehensive questionnaire will look at the nature of the fall, indoors/outdoors, upstairs/downstairs…etc.

The CEO said the hospital is also ahead of the curve regarding Electronic Health Records which will become standard practice in the country by 2015.  Loveless had doubts that deadline will be achieved on a national scale, but said PMC has been working at the process in stages and the first has been completed and the second should be accomplished by the end of this September.  The project is outlined in two parts under HIPAA, Health Information Protection and Portability Act.  One facet deals with patient information security and the other with information portability, in which electronic health records could be available for a Colorado resident who requires medical treatment in another state.

By Russ Baldwin