Leadership Lincoln County Healthcare Day
December 19, 2024 | Submitted by Jackie Curtis, North Platte Surgery Center
 
The Lincoln County Leadership class continued their education journey in December by visiting Great Plains Health. Our first speaker of the day was Chief Executive Officer Ivan Mitchell. Ivan has been at GPH for 9 years and has helped create a path to ensure access to quality healthcare in rural Nebraska. Great Plains Health is a local nonprofit community hospital that continues to grow their services and exceed the region’s needs. This is done by partnering with local hospitals to maintain independence of healthcare in our area. With growth comes the need for more nurses, doctors, and support staff. Part of this growth includes the Mid-Plains Community Program expansion along with the University of Nebraska Medical Center Accelerated Registered Nurse Program. Great Plains Health currently employs roughly 1,200 people. With 116 hospital beds, 30 medical specialties, and roughly 4,700 admissions per year it is integral that GPH helps keep these paths open for their staff to continue to focus on and live their mission, vision and values. Ivan also shared all of the growth on campus to continue to care for their patients in the future. You have likely already seen the Physical Therapy Rehabilitation building expansion at Leota and Jeffers. Coming in 2025 GPH is welcoming a much-needed Pharmacy and Intravenous Therapy remodel and an Orthopedics expansion.
 
Next, we visited Steph Jacobson, Emergency Department Director, to take a tour of the GPH Emergency Department. This is a 27 bed ER that sees 20,000 patients per year, roughly 60 patients a day with some days seeing upwards of 80 patients. There are different ER rooms for different needs. They have a fast track, low acuity area of five rooms for patients with non-urgent injuries or condition. They have two rooms for total assistance patients and total lifts to prevent patient and staff injury. GPH even has a room designated specifically for sexual assault victims for their privacy and security. There are 3 separate trauma bays. One bay is specifically for children, infants and quick deliveries. These rooms are quickly accessible by the ambulance bays and spacious to allow a team to work as efficiently as possible. Steph shared with us that their busiest time of day is from 8am to 1am with respiratory season being the business time of year. 
 
We then ventured back through the hospital over to the pharmacy where Amy Childers and Jason North, Pharmacy Director, greeted us. Amy explained that all medications for the entire hospital are managed within the pharmacy. Many safeguards are implemented to ensure that all patients receive the correct mediation with the correct dosage. All orders are obtained through EPIC, the GPH Electronic Medical Record (EMR) system, filled, and put into the correct location bags to each department. No prescription leaves the pharmacy without a pharmacist checking the order again.
Once our tour of GPH was complete we headed back to the conference room where we got the opportunity to hear from Education Manager Nikki Tomlinson, Director of Volunteer Services Crystal Welch, Trauma Coordinator Kellie Mahanes, and Clinic Manager Chastity Orr. Nikki was a much-needed refresher of how serious heart disease is and that it is the leading cause of death. She informed us that 72% of heart attacks happen at home and that survival rate depends on how quickly you receive CPR. Knowing how to provide CPR or know where and AED (Automated External Defibrillator) is located could help your family, friend, coworker, or even a bystander survive a heart attack. Nikki also let us know that GPH provides lifesaving classes for businesses in town. We then got to hear from Crystal Welch and how the GPH volunteers add to patient and guest experience. They are there to help anticipate patient needs. These selfless volunteers visit patient rooms to help keep their stay more enjoyable and comfortable, with the exception of isolation rooms or safety concerns. These roles are primarily filled by retired volunteers, but GPH welcomes anyone interested in helping. Following Crystal, Kellie Mahanes explained to the group that GPH is a Level 3 Trauma hospital. She explained the ‘Stop the Bleed’ acronym ABC : A – Alert 911, to know your location, and to follow instructions; B – Bleeding – find the source; C – Compression – use gauze or a tourniquet to stop the bleed. Kellie also demonstrated how to use a tourniquet. To finish out our morning, Chastity Orr, who has been with GPH for 17 years, gave us some gut-wrenching information on human trafficking in Nebraska. She explained the different types of trafficking, the age ranges that people typically enter into trafficking, and the ways predators access their victims. She stated that 88% of victims being trafficked see a doctor while being trafficked so it is important for GPH employees to see signs of trafficking and report to their managers.

After our lunch break, we were welcomed back to our seats by Megan McGown, Chief Development Officer, and Brandon Kelliher, Chief Information Officer at Great Plains Health. Megan gave us a look at how GPH impacts the community and how the Great Plains Health Foundation helps support the hospital. GPH services an area the size of Pennsylvania and is the only hospital in Lincoln County. Megan shared how recruiting and retaining quality healthcare providers is crucial for growth. She also elaborated on some of the changes that the GPH Foundation helps support including the ER expansion, Cath Lab Expansion, Da Vinic Robot, and wigs for Cancer patients to name a few. She also touched on the HERO Club at GPH (Hospital Employees Reaching Out) and how they are giving back to the hospital to help support and finance these endeavors as well. Brandon Kelliher, also the Mayor of North Platte, had a chance to speak with LLC class for a second time this year. Brandon reiterated that to improve a community you have to improve the economy. Jobs, homes, and entertainment are driving forces. Small businesses also help drive this, as they become bigger businesses. Brandon was asked how he manages being a CIO of a hospital with such a big reach along side of being the mayor and he said, “Good support staff and scheduled down time for personal care and mental health are crucial”.

To finish out our day we traveled out to Mid Plains Community College South Campus Health Center to take a tour of their facility. We got a chance to see into the dental assisting classrooms, EMS classrooms, and nursing simulation labs. This included the ambulance simulator and the nursing simulators that respond with typical patient issues and complains in real time. These simulators help provide real life experience for students. MPCC typically allows 32 students into their 2-year nursing program each year and graduate 22-24 typically. The dental assisting program allows 12 but will allow more if potential students have met the requirements, and if you are extremely dedicated you can graduate the EMS program in roughly 9 months.

I have learned we are very fortunate in Lincoln County to have such incredible healthcare-related services available to us in our rural community. From education, to careers, to volunteering in retirement, healthcare could be an avenue for anyone in our community. 

See photos of our Healthcare session here.