The beginning of Stephanie Everett’s tenure as administrator and CEO of Mountrail County Health Center in Stanley, N.D., will be impossible to forget: Two weeks after she took the helm in March 2020, the COVID-19 pandemic hit.
“I think anybody who was inside a hospital and a nursing home during COVID — some of us probably have PTSD,” Ms. Everett said on the “Becker’s Healthcare Podcast.” “You see a mask, or you see that word, and I’m just like, ‘Oh my goodness.’ I look back, and we had a great team that was just trying to figure it out.”
As Mountrail has recovered and expanded since then, her focus on the importance of nursing homes has remained steady. The hospital is in the midst of a four-year, $53 million expansion that includes a new nursing home with more assisted living units as well as an enclosed ambulance bay, more clinic rooms and additional services on the medical center side of its operations. Ms. Everett said the project is expected to be completed in early 2028.
“It’s one of the things we talk about at conferences: Who is going to be around to take care of the elderly in nursing homes?” she said. “That reality is coming at us fast. Robots can’t do it. I know AI is coming in on the medical center side, and that’s great, but a robot cannot take care of a resident.”
Although some health systems have launched and expanded hospital-at-home programs in 2026, Becker’s has also reported closures, service suspensions and workforce reductions involving traditional home health, hospice and hospital-at-home operations.
Ms. Everett pointed to circumstances that rural health facilities face with respect to workforce challenges and weather that can make home-based health programs less feasible.
“I run a nursing home, and I want to age in my own house, too. I get it. But in reality, with the nursing shortage and shortages across the board for medical professionals coming up in the future, who is going to take care of you in your house?” she said. “We’re in rural North Dakota. You can get 4 feet of snow. How is somebody going to get into your house if nobody shoveled your driveway?
“Nursing homes are a place to take care of loved ones. Families shouldn’t have to be the caregivers. They shouldn’t have to do the day-to-day: helping them to the bathroom, helping them eat, all of that. That’s where nursing homes come in. For these residents, it’s their last home, and we’re loving on them to the very end and taking care of them.”
In terms of creating a culture in which nursing homes — and hospitals in general — can thrive, Ms. Everett said cultivating employees’ trust in themselves is crucial.
“We get so busy with our day-to-day tasks that we really need to focus on creating an environment where people trust their judgment, recognize their strengths and feel empowered to contribute — and don’t have to stop every moment and say, ‘Am I doing this right?'” she said.
