In a presentation at the Becker’s Hospital Review 6th Annual Meeting, Chief Strategy Officer at Clearwater Valley Hospitals and Clinics and St. Mary’s Hospital Pam McBride and President of Essentia Health—Idaho, Clearwater Valley and St. Mary’s Hospitals and Clinics Patrick Branco gave a presentation titled “Small Stories Matter: Strategies for Excellence as a Small Network.”
“We wanted to do something with population health, but we didn’t have much money,” said Ms. McBride. The first project they took on was lice, after a physician’s child came home with a note to watch out for lice. The physician partnered with the schools to perform volunteer checks once per month. That physician is now a school board member.
“That wasn’t a hard project,” said Ms. McBride. “Our mission is to make a healthy difference in peoples’ lives. We went from there to consider what the most common diagnoses in our area were from public health data to figure out how we could have the highest impact.”
They found obesity was an issue, which lead to blood pressure and depression issues. They decided to conduct BMI screens for ever elementary school student. The project was three weeks from idea to execution, and then parents received notification of the test results.
“This was something public health had been trying to do for years, but it was always connected to a bigger part of a study that included questions about sexual activity and schools weren’t willing to participate,” said Ms. McBride. “We just wanted to do the BMI screenings.”
But even that project didn’t pass without controversy. Every kid was measured, but some didn’t get permission from parents first and there was a backlash. “There is a nationwide study showing half of parents with overweight or obese kids don’t recognize it,” said Ms. McBride. “And they aren’t happy when you point it out. But we think it’s a good consciousness-raiser.”
There were 38 percent of the kids reporting obesity and a community garden was developed at the elementary school to teach children about gardening and healthy eating. A second garden was developed on the other side of the school just for the community.
“We have a lot of ideas and great energy about health living classes, involving the senior center and mentoring kids to grow vegetables,” said Ms. McBride. “We are very excited about the prospect. We started with a tiny budget and people said we couldn’t do anything because we didn’t have any money. But now we grew that into a $25,000 grant for ACA outreach. We are taking that basic concept and spreading it to each town we have clinics in.”
Mr. Branco gave another example of healthcare providers working together to make sure a town had enough pharmacy services. The pharmacies in town dwindled from three to one, and the one wasn’t run efficiently or safely. Eventually a pharmacist from another town was able to come in and get the pharmacy working efficiently again to solve the problem.
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