Prowers Medical Center Board Meets with Parkview Hospital Officials

Prowers Medical Center is considering an alliance with Parkview Hospital in Pueblo.  The affiliation would create additional medical services for PMC, along with some administrative assistance such as compliance guidelines, a peer review process and quality improvement of various programs.  Parkview Hospital representatives included the hospital President Mike Baxter, Judy Fonda Hospital Board Chairman, Kay Whitley VP of Operations and Leslie Barnes, Chief Financial Officer, plus Jamie McKiney, Chairman of the Medical Center Board.

Both groups met to discuss options for a degree of medical services options this past Wednesday, August 27 and carried the discussions into the monthly PMC board meeting.   Baxter said his hospital is a 501 (c) (3) community asset hospital and is also the largest employer in Pueblo County.  At this point, Baxter said he didn’t want to over-promise any services for assistance, noting his hospital also has physician and medical provider turnovers and their tentative outreach program has signed Trinidad Hospital at this point and has contacted other hospitals in the southern part of the state for their potential interest.  PMC Chief Executive Officer, Craig Loveless, said their interests are for orthopedic or cardiologist physicians who could rotate some days in Lamar.  The boards will pursue the feasibility of a future affiliation between the two hospitals.

Prowers Medical Center is taking steps to improve and expand its social media connections by fully developing a facebook site. Mike Zamudio, PMC IT specialist, said the hospital has a rudimentary facebook site which has been used primarily for inter-department communications, but can be developed for a regular social media site.  “There is no specific ownership of the site right now, and we would have to assume that responsibility,” he told the board.  Board chairman, Julie Branes, said this would be another means of connecting hospital services to the community at large, especially with younger residents who are used to using social media sites as their prime means of communication.  A committee will be selected to develop the facebook site as a means of improving community outreach information about PMC, new medical health developments for area residents and as a general means of publicizing future events.  CEO Loveless said the site will be secured to make sure that all medical privacy issues are followed.

Karl Nieschburg was introduced as the new Compliance Officer at Prowers Medical Center.  He is a life-long Lamar resident and will be trained by Quorum Health Resources on all the needed protocols for the position.  The board also approved a medical training loan for Shelby Otto who will take a leave of absence from her position in the Emergency Room to pursue her education.  She has been employed at PMC since 2010.

By Russ Baldwin