Narrator: Rural health care is very important and we need to do what we can to continue
to support rural health care, continue those programs that were put in place a decade ago
to assure that rural hospitals don't close. By keeping the hospital open, it retains jobs
in those communities, and truly hospitals are kind of the heart of the community. If
you don't have hospitals, you don't have care, you don't have jobs, and your community disburses.
Margaret Brockman: Without the small rural hospitals and the critical access hospitals,
we are not going to be able to bring people back home where they need to have; they want
to have their care. They don't want to necessarily be in the city, be in the big city,
and away from their families, and so forth. They want to be able to experience that quality
care right in their own neighborhood. Nurse: Hey guest, need some help?
Patient: Yes, I do. I need to see a doctor Margaret Brockman: We have to be able to figure
out, how do we bring those services to them in their home, and in their home community,
and build those home communities. These grants, some of the planning grants, some of the pilot
programs have given us an opportunity to see what does work, how can we provide those
services out there, and then how can we duplicate those in other areas and so forth.
Margaret Woeppel: All of Nebraska hospitals are set up with trauma back-up services. We
have telemedicine, so that traumatic patient comes in to the emergency room and it's a flip of
a switch or a couple of buttons and you have a trauma physician, trauma surgeon who can
advise and just be a backup. Marty Fattig: Finding what worked for us in
a rural community is extremely difficult. That's where the HRSA funds, FLEX funds, and
CHIP grants in particular come into place. We're able to, by collaborating together with
other rural hospitals, and with our network hospital, we're able to educate our staff
in such a way that we continue to provide excellent, again high quality, safe care and
keep those employees that we had so much trouble recruiting. Keeping them engaged and therefore
retaining them. We need to prove that we can provide as good a care in rural communities
as can be achieved in a tertiary care medical center. We don't just say "hey, we're as good or we're
better," but we want to prove it. Show you the numbers so you can make an informed
decision. Kermit Moore: HRSA grants are important and
are critical to our survival because of the training that we can provide our staff. We
are able to send them to training that helps them improve our quality of care. It helps them
provide better leadership within the facility. It keeps them engaged, it keeps them involved,
and it keeps them in the community. We actually saw a tremendous boost in our
HCAHPS scores when we did personalized, mission-centered care, because the patient feels like we're
engaged with them. They feel like they're engaged with us. You're going to get better
care and it's all because of the training, the advanced training that we were given.
Marty Fattig: Even though it may seem that the funds we received from the federal government
are small in amount, we are able to parlay those funds into a significant improvement
in quality of care in hospitals in rural Nebraska.