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Bradford Regional Medical Center sees plenty of changes over past year
By KYLE MILLIRON
Era Reporter
kylem@bradfordera.com
There have been plenty of changes to Bradford Regional Medical Center in the past year, many of which can be seen by visiting the hospital’s campus.
But, in addition to the visible changes, hospital officials reported at the BRMC Annual Meeting on Tuesday morning that the hospital and affiliated groups have undergone many unseen developments in the past year as well.
Personnel management practices, efficiency initiatives, hospital integration, the Bradford Hospital Auxiliary, the Bradford Hospital Foundation, staffing additions and renovations were all topics of discussion during the meeting held at the Bradford Club.
During the welcome address, George Leonhardt, BRMC’s president and chief executive officer, said the hospital’s new mission statement — Caring for our community through the journey of life — provides an ideal towards which the hospital will strive to achieve. The mission statement seemed embedded in each speaker’s presentation.
Dennis Geitner, BRMC’s vice president of human resources, addressed a key element of providing lifelong care — quality hospital personnel. He outlined the Management Control System the hospital launched in January of 2007. The system was designed as a tool to benchmark budget factors such as productivity and efficiency.
“We share many of the same challenges that you face — spiraling supply costs, rising utility and energy costs, spikes in health insurance costs, workers’ compensation costs and the uncertainties of retirement, pension funds and investment,” Geitner explained at the meeting. “We used (MCS) to match staffing to patient volumes on a day-to-day, shift-by-shift basis.”
In it’s first full fiscal year of implementation, MCS reduced paid hours in the hospital by 63,000, Geitner revealed, but, he assured, “maintaining quality patient care is our primary consideration.”
Deborah Price, senior vice president for Patient Care Services, supported Geitner’s claim, saying patient care has not diminished at all. Price relayed some patient statements gathered through a Patient Satisfaction Survey in which one patient thanked hospital staff for “saving my life.”
Providing a lifetime of quality care to Bradford and the surrounding region also hinges greatly on the ability to recruit a first-class medical staff, a proficiency for BRMC over the past year, according to Nellie Wallace, physician/professional recruiter for the hospital.
Wallace said in the past year BRMC has brought in 10 physicians to add to the 120-year history of quality BRMC professionalism. Headlining the physician additions is Dr. Eyad Al-Hattab, medical director oncology/hematology of the new Cancer Care Center in August 2007. Al-Hattab is also an attending physician at Roswell Park Cancer Institute in Buffalo, N.Y.
Looking towards the future, Wallace said the hospital is “actively seeking” specialists in neurology, internal medicine, pediatrics and orthopedics.
Leonhardt and Timothy J. Finan, Olean (N.Y.) General Hospital’s president and CEO, said the review process for the two hospitals’ integration has recently begun, and the results of the review should begin surfacing by the end of December.
“They’ll be a lot of speed bumps along the way,” Finan said of the integration. “But, this is a great opportunity to preserve the health care systems in our communities. The days of free-standing hospitals trying to go at it alone are gone.”
Leonhardt elaborated on the initial phases of the integration during his presentation at the meeting.
“Last week our Steering Committee ... had its first organizational meeting to assign responsibilities and set specific timelines for completing all the regulatory requirements for this integration,” he said, adding the integration is targeted towards growth of shared services — not the elimination of duplicate services.
Officials from BRMC-affiliated groups, including the Bradford Hospital Foundation and Bradford Hospital Auxiliary, also reported on their efforts to maximize lifelong community care.
Vonda Reese, Auxiliary vice president, reported the Auxiliary made a $300,000 pledge — the largest in its 76-year history — to the hospital. The group also gave $6,000 in scholarships to nursing and radiography students last year, with an anticipated $6,750 to be dolled out this year.
The HeartStrings gift shop at the hospital also increased sales by 35 percent this year, Reese said.
Sandra McKinley, chairwoman of the Bradford Hospital Foundation, a philanthropic organization aimed towards assisting BRMC in attaining its goals and mission, reported the Foundation has raised $5.1 million of its $6 million capital campaign goal.
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