Start of Session
– Passionate talk about the Wildlife Center
– No Closed Session this meeting
– Roll Call, All board members present apart from Rick Estenson and Jessica Peterson White
– 5 voting members present so quorum minimum was reached
– Agenda approved and seconded
– Questions Throughout Meeting:
– People getting used to new places, but I thought they already worked here? – There are new offices, new colleagues. The entire building was not renovated, but people were moved around in order to account for the upscale of the hospital.
– 40 people hired, hopefully they had experience?
– Yes, no one was poached from other places, there are a lot of different disciplines, not only clinicians who were hired (ie. IT and HR). Everyone needs a bit of onboarding experience help but no one is being thrown in the deep end.
– What is the capacity of urgent care and the lab, is there more capacity? – Moved from 4 to 6 rooms in urgent care, using the process of capping during the term of a day. If they know that the providers can’t see any more than the people currently in the waiting room before the day is out they can turn patients away. ER was seeing some backlog from the additional stream of patients [closed urgent care] but they are adapting and are grateful for the impact of the new urgent care with taking on more people.
– If Docs are on 50% schedule will there be a decrease in pay?
– No, they are all being paid full for the time being, working to move them up to 100% as the hospital gets used to the change.
– Holding claims for 30 days is going in the wrong way for the books… (open ended question)
– Need clauses that can only happen after new patients are seen, need to hold claims and estimate revenue in the time being. They are working on getting everything covered, payments and payment inflows will start to come in as the hospital keeps operating.
– Follow up comment from question asker about how they would prefer to have solid revenue rather than estimates but it was laughed off.
– Reports
– Update of Jefferson Road Clinic opening (Josh Salzman)
– Timeline: Letter of Intent Dec 12, Clinician Offer letters/decisions middle of Feb, Final deal end of April, May 4th was end of Alina Clinic staff positions posted, Last patient day at Alina was 28th of August,
Conversion work on Labor day weekend (with Labor day off), Moved into orientation September 8th, Urgent care opened September 17, First day of Patients September 18th (there was a line outside of the door)
– 34 clinicians joined from Alina, 130 new employees (83 from Alina and 47 new hires), over 15 million record files transferred from Alina to NHS, lots of recycling as a result of 1965 pieces of hardware, average from 30-50s attendees in Urgent Care but 54 showed up on the first day, very efficient from first day onwards.
– Focused on
– Clinician Recruitment
– need some more family med clinicians after 1 retirement and a couple employer changes.
– staffing and onboarding
– Patients/clinicians were happy with the new labs and a patient’s mother was happy to talk to a human on the phone for child wellness check up (a change from the phone system used in the Alina days).
– Facilities and Equipment
– took out the dead tree outside the clinic for aesthetics, IT is working on getting everything set up and running with transferring everyone over to the new Expanse.
– IT Hardware and Software
– phone system has new provider, upgraded the screening machinery for labs
– Communications and Marketing
– Social media has been doing well, working on keeping an ear out in the community and clearing up any misunderstandings about the changes
– Patient Records.
– Need to complete transfer into Expanse, workflow for accessing information
– Photos of the move-in crew talking about staging the hospital physically and through IT.
– New Urgent Care
– The entrance door is currently manual and not automated (button). – Need safety doors within the hospital so people don’t wander around after the clinic closes at 5
– Problems with waiting in line will resolve as people get more into the rhythm of things, nothing is happening that they did not anticipate
– Phone cues are long but they are aware and currently getting people hired and trained to fill the gaps
– IT team transferred back to campus
– Urgent Care attendance was higher than expected, working to adapt before respiratory symptoms
– Do not encourage walk ins
– Good feedback from providers about how things are going and the signs look great – Communications
– A bulk of work was leading up to the opening, now focused on listening to patients, providers, and the community. Monitoring conversation and making sure everyone has everything they need.
– Someone in the community had said they had closed Urgent Care permanently in Northfield but a board member had to clarify that it had just moved locations.
– Talking about open house meeting to bring together all employees – Last day of Alina meetings will happen next meeting
– Suggesting that they have the next board meeting at the Jefferson Road Clinic to get a mini walking tour through the space (10/22). Working on finding a space big enough for everyone.
– Providers from Alina had no idea that they could do colonoscopies in Northfield itself
– It’s important to have open communication with the new hires in order to make them feel comfortable and now what is offered in Northfield Clinics and Hospitals – Zander Abott CEO Report
– Quality and Safety
– The mock survey from August has been compiled and prioritized.
– Teams led by Lisa Bauer et al. are updating workflows, policies, and education.
– Kicking of Fall prevention campaign to reduce patient and staff fails.
– “Kicking off” is quite the pun for a campaign on Falling
– Financial Performance
– Kaufman Hall engagement to improve clinical efficiency, facility outpatient CDI, and revenue cycle will end this December. It outperformed expectations.
– Benefit tracking since September 2025, $3M improvement to income statement, $2.8M in money sheet.
– Employee Engagement
– NH+C participation rate and engagement score both increased. 55 (+2) on Response Rate and 49 (+4) for Engagement score (50+ equals a highly engaged organization).
– Service Line Growth
– Peds Strategic Planning focusing on nursery care, ED care, and outpatient specialty care
– Digestive Health and Gastroenterology
– Colonoscopy, Upper endoscopy, inflammatory bowel disease,
Colon Cancer screening and prevention, etc.
– Allows for people in Northfield and the surrounding areas to come to NHS to receive care
– Financial Report
– 80,000 dollar loss, almost break even from Alina
– Discount rate was unfavorable to budget
– In August 426 in patient days, busiest month
– Outpatient was right on budget for August
– Births were very high
– CCIC procedures were high (10%) after bringing on Dr. Kamboj
– 1.9 mill over budget for cancer payments but gov assistance brings it down – Excluding Alina in August net revenue was 400,000 over budget, operating loss of 88,000. Pretty good break even
– Good investment month
– May through August: made about 200-300 thousand. Overall great summer. Kaufmann Hall definitely helped
– Improvement of about 1mil in income from operations from last year. – Little over budget for this month but everything is coming out as they expected and everything is in control
– Days Cash on hand went up to 129. Remains pretty consistent.
– Verbal
– Quality and Safety
– Grievance rate is on track with previous years, doing well with patient recovery. Separated billing concerns from other concerns
– Responsiveness of Staff is good, working with providers who have multiple overnights
– Working on opportunities for improvement with Hospitals for sepsis protections
– Good response time for Stroke events in the hospitals working with clinicians to make it even faster
– Readmissions 3.8% which is very low compared to state avg of 14% – Really close on Diabetes control, working on disease screenings
– 824 attributable patients to the organization
– Increase safety reports, most were near misses
– Patient falls are at normal levels.
– Stacey Rice, Quality improvement, incredible depth in knowledge, being asked to consult on what NHS did for other organizations across the country
– Wellness visits are above benchmark for volvana(?) and headwaters
– Will see decrease in measures with the large addition of patients to the organization
– Finance Continued
– Update was given on current markets/economy
– Portfolio is about 43 million, with most being in cash with 10 million in investments
– Is that too conservative or should the company invest more into the economy
– If debts get better conservatism can be reconsidered
– Maybe create a separate committee for the episodic issues happening within the financial committee
– Create a schedule for the year with guests and what is going to be talked about to prepare for investments, audits, etc.
– Onboarding to this committee is a bit intense but currently have had consistent membership balance within the committee
– Cash Flow is a good nest egg to support the hospital for the next 6 months. – Motion to adjourn open session with no closed session at 6:17pm (40 min earlier than expected).
– Retreat scheduled for 6th of Nov.
