State of health care in Carbon County improves

The future of health care in Carbon County got a little brighter this year.

That was the message during the ninth annual Human Services Priorities Breakfast last week.

More than 100 people from various county groups gathered at Dean Anthony’s for the event, hosted by the Carbon County Interagency and Family Collaborative Board. This year’s theme was “Building access to a stronger health system in Carbon County.”

Terry Purcell, president of the St. Luke’s University Health Network Gnaden Huetten and Palmerton campuses spoke about how partnerships have helped the small hospitals best serve the communities.

“A little over a year ago, I was very concerned about the health care in Carbon County,” Purcell said.

“Our health system was struggling. We were on track to lose about $6 million. Our volumes were falling. We were losing employees because they were concerned about our future. We couldn’t recruit new physicians to the area and we were running out of cash. It was a pretty dire situation.”

Because of this, the Blue Mountain Health System board began courting partners.

Enter St. Luke’s.

“Why did we join St. Luke’s?” Purcell asked.

The answer was simple, he said. Reasons included the health network’s great reputation and track record with fixing struggling hospitals, as well as their strong presence in the community.

New services

On Jan. 1, the merger between Blue Mountain Health System and St. Luke’s became official, and on Jan. 2, Gnaden Huetten and Palmerton campuses began to reap the benefits of this new partnership, receiving nine ICU doctors from St. Luke’s Miners Campus to cover the two campuses’ ICUs and better improve the quality of care that they were providing.

“Not only did we get nine doctors,” Purcell said, “they were trained at some of the best health systems in the United States — Duke, Cleveland Clinic, Massachusetts General. So right off the bat, we’ve seen an improvement in our ICU care on day two.”

Two weeks later, Gnaden Huetten and Palmerton received telemedicine services in the areas of stroke, neurology and infectious disease.

These telemedicine services provide patients in Carbon County with access to specialists in those fields without having to be transported to the Lehigh Valley, especially when minutes count.

In addition, Gnaden Huetten, Palmerton and Miners, as a newly combined network of care in the region, secured an interventional radiologist to provide services that normally weren’t available in Carbon and Schuylkill counties; and also brought in an additional nine vascular physicians on the St. Luke’s staff.

“It prevents probably about 100 people a year from being transported to another care facility,” Purcell said.

With all the new services the campuses are now providing, Purcell said St. Luke’s is installing its Epic Electronic Health Records system at both campuses.

The new system typically takes about two years to implement, but Gnaden Huetten and Palmerton are putting into place in five months.

“It’s good for the patients because if you see your physician and have to be hospitalized, we can see everything that happened in the physician’s medical record and vice versa,” Purcell said.

A $15 million commitment

To date, Purcell was happy to report, that St. Luke’s nearly $15 million investment in Carbon County has helped the small hospitals become sustainable, reducing the overall operating expenses significantly, as well as helping them reverse a negative financial return.

“In three months, we went from a $6 million operating loss and made a $2 million profit,” he said. “It’s just been an incredible short-term turnaround.

“The merger has been good for the patients because they don’t have to travel as much; good for the community because we’ll bring in more resources to the community; good for the employees, who have seen significant pay increases and benefit improvements.

“The future of health care in Carbon County looks bright. You’re going to see many new programs and services, new physicians so please stay tuned. You are going to see a lot of great things happening.”

Neighboring success story

With the merger, the Gnaden Huetten and Palmerton campuses have joined with the Miners Campus in Coaldale, a formerly small struggling independent hospital, in the St. Luke’s family.

Wendy Lazo, president of St. Luke’s Miners Campus, said that through thepartnership with St. Luke’s, the Miners Campus has gone from a failing health system to being designated a five-star hospital by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services for quality and patient satisfaction; received the IBM Watson Health Award for the fourth year; has been able to make strides in growing the emergency department and improvements in the operating room; and has created an initiative in monitoring prescriptions to help in the opioid abuse epidemic.

“Being small doesn’t mean you can’t provide great care and that you have any less quality of service than a large institution,” Lazo said. “None of that is doable without a great team.”