Northfield Hospital and Clinics OBserver Report, Board Meeting, 12.28.23

Northfield Hospital and Clinics Board Meeting Observer Report from December 28, 2023

• Executive Summary
• Call to Order
• Regular and Consent Agenda
  • Reports: Hospital Chief of Staff Report– Ben Flannery
    • No concerns/controversies
• Presentations/Discussion/Action Items
  • Home Health Quality Data– (Tammy Hayes, C.N.E.)
    • The Home Health Program serves people within a 25 mile radius. In order to be profitable the program needs about 45 patient visits a day. So far, they are not consistently meeting this goal, but they do have enough staffing for this many visits. They have more patients than this, but some patients do not require daily visits.
    • This annual report looked at topics such as medication errors, patient complaints, infection surveillance and so on and identified some problem areas as well as strengths.Some things that have been put in place based on the feedback from data include staff education, improving technology, and helping to centralize scheduling in order to track case loads.It is likely that there will be an increasing need for home care in Northfield.
  • Digital Services Plan– (Vern Lougheed, Director of IT/ITS)
    • Digital services are a priority in the hospital’s strategic plan. They are rapidly replacing buildings and facilities as the primary capital investment in healthcare.
    • Digital services include phones, computers, analytic tools, portals, hardware. For consumers, digital services include online scheduling, websites, monitoring wait times, educational tools. For active patient care, digital services used include virtual care, connected medical devices, entertainment. For home care, digital services used might be patient generated data, managing chronic conditions, and post discharge monitoring and education.
    • The hospital needs to develop a long term plan to support IT projects and the plan needs to be refreshed annually.
    • Patient and consumer preferences need to be monitored– not everyone has access to digital resources, or cares to interact digitally.
    • Policy guidelines and priorities need to be developed, along with structure for emerging AI tools and ways to deal with concerns about cybersecurity.
    • There are many grants available for digital services. The hospital needs to take advantage of this.
  • Hospital Scope of Practice– (Sandy Mulford, Special Projects Consultant)
    • There are changes being made to decisions regarding keeping patients in our hospital vs. sending them on to other hospitals. In many cases, patients that were previously sent to other hospitals are now being cared for at our hospital out of necessity (no beds elsewhere) or because we now have training or technology to care for them here. Staff are rethinking how a patient can get care here rather than transferring them to another hospital. 
    • Some things that have happened that have allowed more patients to stay in our hospital include:
      • Expanded hospitalist staffing
      • Improved hospital discharge process ( opens up beds faster)
      • Added telehealth support.
        • The menu of telehealth options will continue to expand.
  • Other
    • Proposed Lonsdale Clinic Sale– (Jerry Ehn, COO)
      • There have been two parties interested in purchasing the Lonsdale Clinic and one offer has been received from the City of Lonsdale. The administration recommended that the board accept the offer. The board voted and the offer was accepted unanimously. The City Council now has to approve this, and it will probably be on the council agenda in January.
  • Executive and Committee Reports
    • CEO Report (Steve Underdahl, President and CEO)
      • The hospital continues to examine what it means to be a community hospital. 
      • The hospital and clinics have been busy in December. There is high demand for “today care” options such as Urgent Care and ER services.
      • There are still financial problems.
      • The new sick time state law takes effect January 1st. There has been a lot of administrative work leading up to this. Educating about it has been time consuming.
      • The expansion of MNCare continues to get attention.
      • Representative Robert Biermann visited NH+C recently. He serves on some very relevant committees.
      • One goal in 2024 is to try to get back to a balanced budget.
    • Financial Report (Eric Guth, CFO)
      • The hospital continues to have high volumes and operate at a financial loss. This pattern is typical of other smaller community hospitals.
      • Typically, the 4th quarter has the highest net revenue at least partly due to people having more elective surgeries because they have met their insurance deductibles.
      • Budget and Finance Committee (verbal) report (Fred Rogers) Some portfolio adjustments are recommended making the funds less subject to market fluctuation.
• Round table/Announcements/Questions
  • Nothing reported or said.

Respectfully submitted by observer Anne Larson.