October 22, 2012
When I left my
home this morning it was pouring. With a
hat and rain coat it was just another late fall day in Humboldt County. On my drive to our luncheon there were rain
clouds out, but the sun was peeking through.
Again, another case of situation normal on the North Coast. I know, I know – you’re probably wondering
whether our weather person and President, Nancy Dean, had predicted this on
again and off again weather, but she was mum on the subject on arrival to the
fifteenth meeting of the 2012-2013 year. It was nice to see Bob Prior, one of
our long term members (1974) and a Paul Harris fellow lead us in the flag
salute – which started right on time.
Next, former President and Paul Harris Fellow Carlton
Nielsen read a nice invocation, with special note and prayers
for Don Leonard who, we are happy to hear, is recovering nicely from unexpected
heart surgery.
While there were
no student guests announced at the meeting this week, but we did hear from our
own exchange student Franco Calleja, who announced he’s off to San
Francisco to see the sights, check out accommodations at Alcatraz, and do his best to cheer on the Oakland Raiders
to a hopeful win this weekend.
We had one
visiting Rotarian, Paul McGinty, who is with St. Joseph’s Hospital, and hails from the
South West Rotary Club of Eureka. We
also had two guests that were introduced. First, our own Christine Witt
introduced Cassandra Wagner, who handles scholarships for Humboldt Area
Foundation. Second, Christian Hill
introduced Dr. Eric Gerdes, our guest speaker and the ED Medical Director for St. Joseph’s Hospital.
We had two
birthdays announced, Lane Strope whose annual special day is the 25th of
October, and Doug Lanning who celebrates his naming day on the 27th
of October. We also had two other
birthday boys who were sitting at the head table – Steve Lafferty whose
birthday is the 3rd of October, and Bruce Smith whose day is the 18th
of October.
There were no
membership or personal anniversaries announced this week.
There were a
healthy number of announcements made this week, so let’s get right to it.
Lost Coast Rotaractraised $1800 for their international fund raiser. Also, the have another fund raiser this
weekend, the Spirits and Spirits tour of the haunts of Old
Town; tickets for this event can be
obtained at the Old
Town branch of Ramones.
We were reminded
that October is still Vocational Service Month.
The club will be giving recognition and presenting a gift to the
Rotarian who best exemplifies the Four Way Test and the Rotary Code of Conduct
in their vocational life and who has made a vocational contribution to the Club
or community. If you know of any
Rotarian who you feel meets these criteria please send President Dean or any
Board Member their name and a short description of how they meet the
criteria. The presentation will occur at
our luncheon next week on October 29th.
World Polio Day
is October 24th. We are right
on the brink of eliminating this disease worldwide, so give some thought,
prayers and any effort you can provide to make this so.
John Bradley and
Mindy Bussman are asking for help with Backpacks this Thursday.
Don’t forget,
our annual Christmas Party is coming up soon on December 15th at the
Ingomar Club, so mark this on your calendars if you haven’t already done so!
The
Beautification Project for the northerly interior gateway to Eureka is happening on Saturday, November 3rd,
at 9am. We need as many hands on deck as
we can get to help with weeding and bark, says Jill McDonald.
Carol Rische
introduced Fatima Naylor and Shayla Burbich, who represent Families Advocating
Autism Now (www.faanclub.org). They received a grant of $575 from our club, and they wanted to
thank us for that, and tell us of the important services this group offer – one
important one being Sensory Screening.
Autism is much more common than most people are aware of. Steve Justus,
for one, stood up with great heart to tell us of his personal experience of
this in his family, and called around the room for others who had experienced
this in their family or circle of friends – a number of hands went up. Autism is a growing phenomenon and our Club
is proud to support these efforts.
President Dean
then handed out some rainsticks. One
went to Sally Arnot who was fined for being absent recently, as she has been spending
time in Willow Creek over the summer with her son’s family and her two young
grandchildren. Sally then insisted on
paying a double fine so she could get two rainsticks – one for each grandchild. Way to go Sally!
Another rainstick went to Jim Davis who has
been absent due to his travels.
Christian Hill then introduced our speaker for the day
– Dr. Eric Gerdes, who is St. Joseph’s
ED Medical Director, who essentially wanted to give us an update on the new
Tower, which is now scheduled to open on November 11th, as well as
provide information on some of the challenges the hospital and medical
profession are facing.
Eric shared with
us that the hospital currently only has nine beds in the Emergency Department
(ER), and these beds are mostly in shared rooms only separated by
curtains. The ER currently sees about
25,000 patients per year of which 17,000 are urgent care cases. With the opening of the new Tower, they
expect the ER department will be able to handle 44,000 patients per year, and
there will now be 20 private emergency rooms.
One interesting
method Dr. Gerdes used to inform us was to ask a series of survey like
questions which he used to make a number of points, and to point out how we all
need more and better information to both understand the issues, and to have any
chance of truly addressing them. For
example, he asked what percent of total medical costs are being used for ER
services. The numbers ranged from 2% to
47%. The answer was just 2%, which many
found surprising.
The most
relevant issue for ER departments is Patient Flow. You need to move the patients through the
system, and the more efficiently you can do this, the more service you can
provide. One measure hospitals use is how many people Left Without Being Seen
(LWBS). In February 2011 that number was 7.2%, while the national average at
that time was 5.0%. So, in June of 2011
St. Josephs and Dr. Gerdes introduced a program to address this, the key
component of which is a preliminary Rapid Medical Evaluation (RME) which allows
each patient to be more properly routed through the system. The effects of these efforts has been that
the LWBS ratio has dropped to 2% at our local St. Josephs ER, and their target
is to get that down to 1%.
Dr. Gerdes then
shared a number of other very interesting statistics, such as Time to Provide
services, Turn Around Time to discharge, Turn Around Time to admit, Door to
Admission times, and then a series of core measures the hospital is using to
track patients who come to ER. He also spent some time talking about the new
Cath Lab.
One of the
startling statistics is how much time it takes for patients to move through the
system, with times ranging from 153 minutes for one measure, and 339 at the
other end of the spectrum. This often
leads to questions as to what is taking so much time. The reality is that with new laws &
regulations, the efforts needed to process claims with insurers and
Medicare/Medicaid, and efforts to improve the charting (documenting all efforts
made for a patient) needed to address these changes, doctors and nurses are
spending ever increasing amounts of times doing reports and charts. Even with new computer systems these efforts
are still draining more time than they used to.
One bright spot
to note is that nationwide the percentage of ER Board Certified doctors in ER
departments is only 55%, but St. Josephs can now happily boast that 100% of
their ER doctors are certified.
One major
challenge that our local medical system faces is that only 6% of doctors
surveyed will typically even consider moving to smaller communities with
populations of 50,000 or less. To put that into perspective, of those screen
for interest in local positions, and 71 who were ultimately interviewed for
positions at St. Josephs ER department, only 5 have accepted. Dr. Gerdes would still like to find 1 or 2
more doctors for his team, but it’s a real challenge.
A number of
recent surveys put this issue in even more stark relief. Of 13,500 doctors surveyed, given all the
various obstacles they face, 60% say they would like to retire from the
profession. Even among those who are under 40 years of age, 47% say they would
like to retire. All of this points to
some other worrying numbers. Currently the nationwide shortage of doctors is
estimated at 13,700, and it is further estimated that by 2015 the shortage will
be 62,900, and by 2020 the shortage will rise to about 91,500. Given all of these challenges, and the
improvements the new tower at the hospital will offer our community, we have a
much improved chance of meeting the challenges we face, but there is still a
lot of work to do and this will only increase as we move forward in time.
The Rotary Club
was very grateful to hear from Dr. Gerdes. The club had him sign a book for our library project. Nancy
then closed the meeting, reminding once again that next week was dark.
Presented in
Rotary Service by Bruce Smith
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