Denten Park, new CEO for Mountain West Medical Center.
- photography / Troy Boman
- photography / Troy Boman
A: This year has been exceptional — one of our best years, without a doubt. Because of the success of the hospital, we've been able to put an influx of capital into the system. This influx includes expansion of our women's services and building a new women's health center, as well as putting $1.5 million back into the facility for equipment improvements. Our revenues have increased between 8 to 10 percent each year over the last five years, and we've seen about 15,000 patients this year in our ER, which is an increase of 2.5 to 3 percent compared with last year. We're offering services that were never offered here before, including cardiology, and both our catheterization lab and cardiology services were launched this year. We now have Tooele's first-ever full-time cardiologist, Dr. Garr, who lives in the community. We definitely have room for further growth, too, and we definitely see opportunities for the number of services we offer to continue to increase.
Q: What do you attribute that success to?
A: We have great patient outcomes, which means that our patient care has met or exceeded national standards here. Our quality medical staff and internal staff have helped us have those good quality outcomes. We have national data we look at to see where our quality outcomes are, and we do as well if not better than most hospitals. People in Tooele are starting to realize that rural health care is as good if not better than in the big city, because it's better to go into a community hospital and know that your friends and neighbors are taking care of their friends and neighbors.
Q: What are the biggest challenges facing Mountain West Medical Center?
A: Trying to keep up with the growth of the community and make sure that we're taking care of what we need to take care of in order to have enough services available for our growing community. We also want to change the perception of rural health care. Some residents may feel like they have to leave the community to get quality care, and we'd like to educate our population that quality care is available right here in town.
Q: How do you as CEO plan for Mountain West Medical Center to keep up with growth in Tooele County?
A: Absolutely we'll try to provide more services. Over the next few months we'll be able to start our new women's health center, which is an expansion of our OB services. There are about 1,100 births a year in Tooele County, and we do a little over 500 here. We'd like to be able to meet the needs of all 1,100 if we could, and one of the reasons we're building a women's center is to meet those needs. We'll also be recruiting and expanding services for our radiology and cardiology departments.
Q: In your opinion, how is the hospital's reputation locally?
A: Some may have a perception that rural health care is not as good as big-city health care, but our quality outcomes are as good if not better. Our reputation continues to improve and get better, and we invite anybody who hasn't been through Mountain West Medical Center to come and take a tour and have the opportunity to see the facility as it is today, and not as it was. We've got some of the most modern equipment you could have, and we spend a great deal of capital dollars on our facility to meet the needs of our patients. I think a lot of residents do still see the facility as a small-town hospital, maybe as an extension of the ER. However, we do about 240 surgeries a month here and offer ear, nose and throat, podiatry, ophthalmology, orthopedics, urology, cardiology, pulmonology, family practice and internal medicine, so there's not much that we don't do.
Q: What new initiatives will you pursue to improve the quality of care and continue the growth of the hospital as a business?
A. We have multiple initiatives in place to try to ensure that we meet the needs of our patients. Among those would be the expansion of the women's health center, the expansion of some of our imaging services through the radiology department, and increased recruitment efforts. We'd like to invite and encourage different specialists to come out to our community. A neurologist would be great to have out here, as well as some other specialists we don't currently have but would like to have in order to better meet the needs of our community. We have customer service initiatives in place to try to make sure we're meeting the needs of our customers and make sure the customers are happy with the service provided. We're trying to educate our staff on the latest technology, and we'll be purchasing equipment to better meet the needs of our patients and our physicians. We have patient safety goals and standards we work on everyday, and we work with our medical staff as a team to ensure our patients are safe and secure.
Q: How are Mountain West Medical Center's staffing levels presently?
A: Amazingly well. Staffing has not been a huge concern for us. Health care facilities across the country have seen shortages in nursing, radiology, cardiopulmonary services — basically all areas of health care are in need of staffing. But here in Tooele we're been very fortunate. We have a very supportive and incredible community where people want to live — a good community to recruit into. We always have opportunities and openings for nurses, as well as some hard-to-fill positions like admitting clerks. However, it's nothing like the rest of the country. Vacancy rates across the country can be as high as 30 percent, but we probably have a 3 to 5 percent vacancy rate.
Q: Is recruiting and retaining doctors an ongoing battle for a rural hospital?
A: It's tough to bring in good quality physicians and keep them long-term. We've been very fortunate here and have an incredible medical staff that does a great job, and our staff members wanted to live in Tooele. The entire country wants the same things we want, where we're all competing with one another for the best physicians and medical staff out there. We're fortunate in Tooele because we have an incredible community, a great medical staff to work with, a nice physical clinic and a great support staff here in the building.
Q: How are things coming along with the new women's health center?
A: At present, we have the architectural group and engineering firm working to finalize plans, and we want to get them submitted to the city and the health department as quickly as possible. Hopefully, we can be ready by the first thaw to have our permits in line to be ready to get it moving forward. We know it's going to be at the northeast corner of our facility, and we have the design in place. There's a definite need for this service in our community, so we're doing our best to get it done as quickly as possible. Construction should start at the beginning of 2008. We should be done by the end of '08, or it may even go into '09.
Q: How have you personally settled into Tooele?
A: Tooele is an incredible place with an incredible community feel, and the people here are welcoming to anyone with open arms. It's a great community with just about anything a person could want. The people here are so friendly, open and wonderful to be around. I have no concerns here whatsoever.
Doug Radunich: dougrad@tooeletranscript.com
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