Sorted by date Results 226 - 250 of 275
WRANGELL – A planned-for merger between two regional healthcare providers has been put on hold for two months. Alaska Island Community Services was to merge with larger organization SouthEast Alaska Regional Health Consortium (SEARHC) on February 1, but the consolidation will have to wait until April 1. The merger was formally announced last October, and heads of both organizations subsequently met with Wrangell officials in November and in January to explain the transition. AICS executive Mark Walker has said the move was needed due to g...
The Petersburg Borough Assembly discussed a request made by the Petersburg School District and Petersburg Medical Center to pay a lower power rate last month. The request comes after meetings between PSD, PMC and borough administrators on how to maintain services without increasing fees or taxes. "The school, the hospital and the borough have been getting together in these meetings to try to figure out ways that we can continue to function in the way the community wants without having to cut...
The Petersburg Medical Center has to remedy a housing crunch this year, as they will be evicted from three of the six apartments they rent from Petersburg Mental Health's seven unit apartment building on Fram Street. Evictions would happen now through June. The PMC provides housing for locums and short-term employees and pays up to $1,100 per month for each of the 6 units they currently occupy. CEO Liz Woodyard told the hospital board last Thursday that the hospital likes to have housing within...
Petersburg played host to the Alaska Recreation and Park Association’s 2016 conference last week, with around fifty parks and recreation director and employees in town. On Thursday morning, they were joined by about 30 students and a handful of community members for the keynote address by Greg Morton. Morton is the CEO of the Northern California Human Resources Association, based in San Francisco, California. His message was all about the importance of balancing life and work, and overcoming personal challenges. In 2014, he suffered a s...
JUNEAU, Alaska (AP) – A bear that mauled two cruise ship wilderness guides during a hiking excursion in Alaska attacked so quickly that there was little time to defend against the animal, the CEO of the cruise ship company said. The attack occurred after the guides and a group of hikers from the cruise vessel Wilderness Explorer rounded a “semi-blind corner” and found themselves between the bear and her cub, UnCruise Adventures CEO Dan Blanchard told the Juneau Empire in an interview published Tuesday. “I can’t express enough about how rapid...
Petersburg Medical Center staff and board members face tough decisions and an even tougher fiscal climate as they continue discussion on how to improve or replace their inadequate facility. PMC board, staff members and architect Joann Lott from Jensen Yorba Lott Architects met last Friday, May 6 to discuss the pros and cons of different options. Lott met with the PMC board last October when it presented a facility assessment. Many of the building’s issues include but are not limited to several mechanical and electrical systems in the L...
The Senate Finance Committee introduced a bill, SB 209, that would raise local government and school retirement contributions from 22 percent to 26.5 percent by 2018 and would likely translate to cuts in services and or tax increases locally. PERS, or Public Employee Retirement System, is the state’s retirement benefit plan. Every public employee has a certain tier of benefits and each municipality annually chips in a portion of those benefits. SB 209 increases those municipal contributions incrementally and means local government would i... Full story
Petersburg Medical Center staff and board members are trying to decide whether or not to extensively renovate the facility or build a new hospital after an architectural firm presented a draft assessment showing that much of PMC’s architecture and mechanical and electrical equipment are well beyond their lifespan. Representatives from Jensen Yorba Lott Architects presented the draft plan to the PMC Board two weeks ago after it hired the firm to complete the condition assessment last July. “We’re looking at a subtotal of about $16 million to br... Full story
Construction on a new tub and shower room in the Long Term Care unit at Petersburg Medical Center will begin this month. “We’ve had our contractor and architect look at the project,” said Director of Nursing Jennifer Bryner. “We’re ordering the tile and hoping to get started in the next week or so.” The LTC unit is in the oldest wing of the hospital building and has seen wear and tear from years of daily use by residents. The project was bumped to the top of PMC’s capital projects list after the Division of Health Care Services, part of the A...
Petersburg Medical Center (PMC) Board of Directors unanimously voted to approve spending just under $80,000 to replace the outdated telephone system currently used in the Joy Janssen Clinic after it recently crashed, sending the clinic into crisis mode. PMC lost sixteen extensions on Aug. 17, leaving only a couple active lines throughout the entire clinic. Callers had the ability to leave voice messages on the system, but clinic personnel had no way to access and check the incoming messages. “We were having people call our main switch board w...
A new three-year contract was approved for Petersburg Medical Center (PMC) CEO Liz Woodyard. Woodward has been the CEO at the hospital since 2011, and this is her second contract. She hails originally from Minneapolis, Minn. Before moving to Petersburg, she worked as the CEO of Banner Lassen in Susanville, Calif and the Chief Nursing Officer at Fairbanks Memorial Hospital in Fairbanks. Woodyar's new contract took effect at the beginning of this month. It includes a $200,000 annual salary with...
Organizers are gearing up for the second annual Paddle Battle in the Narrows to be held next Saturday, July 18. The event is a fundraiser for the Petersburg Medical Center Foundation, and this year's proceeds will go toward renovating the shower and tub room used by residents in Long Term Care. "The residents that live here, this is their home and it's (the shower room) not been updated in many, many years and it's showing signs of wear and tear," said Director of Nursing Jennifer Bryner. All... Full story
WRANGELL — Wrangell Medical Center interim CEO Marla Sanger last week announced her intention to conclude her contract on October 30. In a letter addressed to friends and colleagues, she explained the decision was a difficult one, but Sanger will be returning to Vancouver, Wash., to be with family. Sanger had initially been brought aboard in November 2012 as part of PeaceHealth’s leadership contract with Wrangell’s hospital. Initially the contract was to have lasted only a year, but Sanger stayed on as the hospital transitioned past a troub...
The Petersburg Medical Center Board of Directors is taking a closer look at future needs for the community’s hospital. The board approved a facility condition survey in the amount of $26,575 during its regular meeting on May 28. PMC CEO Liz Woodyard said Joann Lott from the Jensen Yorba Lott architectural firm came to look at long term care a few months ago, and that an assessment of the hospital’s condition was brought up at a following board meeting. That got put on hold, but during strategic planning, there was discussion about forming a c...
The Petersburg Medical Center (PMC) will be making a few upgrades once it’s figured out where exactly to take the money from. PMC’s Board of Directors voted to move forward with a capital projects list containing six items; a long-term care tub room, radiology room upgrade, cardiac monitoring system, software, acute care beds and an iSTAT portable blood analyzer used to quickly obtain test data, totaling $398,514. The board gave Interim Chief Financial Officer Doran Hammett the go-ahead to check into leasing options for five of the six dur...
The Petersburg Medical Center (PMC) has moved to protect patients and itself against any potential cyber attacks. The hospital’s Board of Directors approved the purchase of CPM (cyber, privacy and media) liability insurance, underwritten by Lloyds of London CFC Syndicate, in the amount of $6,666.45 per year, including taxes and fees, during its regular board meeting Thursday, April 23. The $2 million policy will cover the hospital if there’s a breach of information, or an accusation of one, said IT Specialist Don Bieber. “The risk we have...
The Petersburg Medical Center Board of Directors approved the hospital’s 2016 budget on Thursday, March 26, and will be sending it on to the Petersburg Borough Assembly the first of April for review. “The budget is really straight forward,” said Interim Chief Financial Officer Dornan Hammett. Petersburg Medical Center is looking at a total revenue of $13.9 million with operating and non-operating revenues, and a total expense of $13.8 million. There’ll be a $580,000 operating revenue loss, but a net gain of $71,000 with the non-ope...
The Petersburg Medical Center is in a good position financially right now, but it’s in the next three to five years that it may face some serious challenges. Representatives from the hospital and its board of directors met at a special meeting with the Petersburg Borough Assembly Monday evening. “Your hospital is strong, you have almost no debt,” said Interim Chief Financial Officer Doran Hammett, who brings in an outside perspective as he does financial work for hospitals around the country. He added that Petersburg has a strong balance sheet...
Petersburg Medical Center CEO Liz Woodyard announced that the hospital is considering hiring an occupational therapist to replace physical therapist Leslie Stancliff who announced her retirement from the facility. “One of the things we’ve looked at as far as services is what are our needs and I think an exciting opportunity for us is to look at is perhaps hiring an occupational therapist instead of a physical therapist,” Woodyard said. Physical Therapy Manager Ellie van Swearingen explained the role of an occupational therapist as opposed to ph...
At last Thursday’s meeting, Petersburg Medical Center’s Interim CFO Doran Hammett updated the board on recent efforts to increase cash on hand at the facility by decreasing accounts receivable (A/R) days –the amount of time it takes for a patient to pay money owed for services rendered. Hammett said that PMC’s accounts receivable days have historically been very high for PMC. “Gross A/R days have ranged from 106 to 145 (days) over the past two years,” he said. “Looking at this last fall we realized that we had gotten to a point in our patien...
The hospital’s debts took a dive after a large payment went out to pay off the cost for improvements to the electronic health records (EHR) systems ― down to $643,576 owed from a former $1.2 million. “We have made a significant payment on that with the money we received from the Meaningful Use (EHR incentive program),” CFO Doran Hammett reported, with CEO Liz Woodyard adding in that the debt was incurred previously, but payments were not required until funds began arriving from the incenti...
Petersburg Medical Center is continuing to balance the books and expand its services, but the budget still will be tight around the edges as it moves forward on some big ticket purchases after recent, costly, repairs. The hospital’s resource committee had met on Sept. 22 to discuss which projects to fund, now and in the future, as members weighed their chances of PMC’s requests appearing higher on the borough’s own capital projects list to be submitted to the state appropriations committee, and therefore be more likely to receive state fundi...
Petersburg's hospital won top marks and recently was honored with the Quality Achievement Award, the highest possible, from the Mountain Pacific Quality Health foundation (MPQH), Liz Woodyard, Petersburg Medical Center's CEO, reported, recognizing the efforts of Quality Specialist Shelly Hjort in providing accurate, timely reports. Medical facilities were scored on seven national quality areas, a composite score known as the Appropriate Care Measure. Heart attacks and failures, pneumonia,...
The Petersburg Medical Center (PMC) hospital board meeting last week covered many topics, several of which revolved around financials as the center received their annual audit and a financial report indicating a break-even year for the fiscal year ending June 30. One new cost also came to the fore as Maintenance Director Mike Boggs reported the fuel oil boiler—one of two boilers used to heat the facility— has a leak and needs to be retubed. However, due to the cost to repair and maintain the old boiler, an estimated $37,900, and fuel costs to...
After 14 years on the Petersburg Medical Center Board of Directors, Tom Abbott tendered his resignation, saying that the hospital was "in a good place" and that he was ready to leave. Abbott, who has served as board president, an elected position, notified Borough Clerk Kathy O'Rear in a letter stating, "The community has an excellent medical center with a professional staff providing quality healthcare to all in our community. The integrity of the staff ensures the public will be treated with... Full story
