The Box Butte General Hospital (BBGH) Board of Trustees met at noon Monday, February 24th in the Alliance Room at BBGH. During the meeting, board members approved credentialing requests, the consent calendar, and the financial report as presented. The meeting included the following key updates and discussions:
Quality and Safety Report
Quality Management Specialist Summer Gonzalez presented the Data and Quality Report, mentioning catheter associated urinary tract infection rates and central line associated bloodstream infections rates ended the calendar year 2024 at 0% reportable events despite some higher utilization months.
Governance and Facility Updates
Chief Executive Officer Lori Mazanec mentioned page 9 of the Nebraska Rural Health Advisory Commission’s Annual Report. This page includes a map of Fiscal Years 2021-2022 through 2023-2024 Financial Impact of Nebraska Loan Repayment Program Participants. Lori Mazanec noted Box Butte County has a financial impact (dollars) of between $6,300,001 to $12,600,000, which indicates Box Butte County as one of the larger recipients of loan repayment dollars with a total of all professions (physicians, physician assistants, nurse practitioners, and occupational therapists) and their total impacts on the state being $323,945,865. Financial impact was determined using information from the National Center for Rural Health Works research on financial impacts and the months worked as documented by the Health Professions Tracking Service database. *Behavioral Health providers were not included in this report as financial impact research is not yet available for these practitioners.
Medical Staff Report
Chief of Staff Timothy Narjes, reported staff is seeing more influenza in the area, noting the efficacy of the flu vaccine to be about 30 percent.
Information Technology Report
Chief Finance Officer Michael O’Dell and Chief Operations Officer Gabriel Behling reported that our Electronic Health Record work with MEDITECH and Tegria is showing success with all departments. BBGH is starting to take most of the manual processes and automating them. Both Meditech and Tegria have identified improvements and tasks needing completed and BBGH has begun working on the solutions. Tegria will continue working with BBGH for around six more months to complete the tasks as it will increase the speed that BBGH can finish this process.
BBGH will be utilizing a mobile MRI throughout March as BBGH makes updates the current MRI suite in the hospital. This will go through March and possibly into April.
Employee Recognition
Employees recognized during the meeting included Employee of the Month, Patient Finance Lead Biller Alexa Lucas. New full-time employees in January include Building Blocks Playschool Teacher Assistant Lilana Cuevas, Phlebotomist Kinley Pfeiffer, Staff Nurse Dain Whitmore, Building Blocks Playschool Cook Lisa Long, Nursing Assistant Adela Figueroa, Communications Clerk Suzanne Bedient, and Building Blocks Playschool Teacher Assistant Amy Honstein.
The board went into executive session at 12:36 p.m. and came out of executive session at 1:20 p.m. with no action taken. The meeting adjourned at 1:21p. The next BBGH board meeting is Monday, March 31st in the Alliance Room. The public is welcome to attend.
Box Butte General Hospital is an equal opportunity provider and employer.