Sheldon, Iowa — This is National Hospital Week. The American Hospital Association says that National Hospital Week 2020 highlights the adage of every hospital, health system and person involved in keeping our communities healthy – that health comes first.
They say that now more than ever, this important week gives us all the opportunity to highlight our hospitals, health systems and health care workers and the innovative ways they are supporting the needs of their community members during this pandemic.
Rick Nordahl, the CEO of Sanford Sheldon Medical Center echoes these sentiments.
(as said:) “Hospital Week and Healthcare Week is really supposed to be a celebration for employees and staff and appreciating them. And of course, we do that but this time COVID-19 has been challenging for us that way it’s tough to celebrate when you have to watch how many people are getting how many hours and because revenue is not there today as it was six months ago either because people are being more cautious about coming in. And then with the COVID we don’t want to have large group gatherings either so it makes a little more challenging but we certainly do appreciate all that hospital staff from our physicians to our housekeepers because they all have a role that needs to be played to make the patients get better when they’re here. “
He says, of course, hospitals and medical facilities benefit a community in obvious ways, but also in some not-so-obvious ways.
(as said:) “They are a huge economic engine. When we take a look at our budget and what we pay out in payroll every year and how that circulates throughout the community… I wish I had the latest report from IHA because that I could be very specific but we probably put about 20 million dollars worth of revenue into the community just by the nature of our payroll. So that’s a huge benefit. Last year, I also know that we did about two million dollars worth of charity care and then another two million dollars worth of bad debt that we processed so four million dollars at the end of the day and that’s on top of the payroll that we do.”
Nordahl tells us that several services are now available at Sanford Sheldon.
(as said:) “We’ve got a full line of orthopedics. They have two orthopods coming right now. Our cardiac care is better than it ever has been with Dr. Stys coming. We’ve got neurology coming we’ve got Dr. Benson coming who is a Uro-Gyn [Urogynecologist]. We’ve got a urologist coming and a podiatrist back again. And we continue to expand as much as we possibly can to really get those services closer to home, that’s really the goal and it’s good for everybody when they can do things in town… so they don’t have to travel for the care. And our clinic hours have expanded. We’re now open until eight o’clock every night starting at 8 o’clock in the morning … except for Fridays and then on Saturday, we’re open of course eight to noon. So we’ve really expanded our hours to meet the needs of the consumer as well as we can.”
National Hospital Week runs through this Saturday, May 16th.
