The Van Wert County Courthouse

Thursday, Mar. 28, 2024

CEO Jim Pope moving hospital into future

DAVE MOSIER/independent editor

Van Wert Health President/CEO Jim Pope had a busy week last week, with the opening of the new Van Wert Health North outpatient facility and implementation of the Epic healthcare information system — the pre-eminent healthcare software system — at the local hospital.

Van Wert Health President/CEO Jim Pope in his office at the hospital. Dave Mosier/Van Wert independent

The veteran healthcare executive, who has 41 years’ experience in the industry, said his first goal after coming here in July 2016 was to take some time to look at where the organization was, and then work with staff members to complete a strategic plan to help the hospital move into the future.

“To make a good strategic plan, you’ve got to know where you are — that’s from a physical plant perspective, that’s from a staffing perspective, that’s from a physician perspective, that’s really from a community needs perspective,” Pope said.

From that process, Pope and his staff came up with three main areas to address: outpatient care, surgical services, and inpatient care.

The new Van Wert Health North facility will help address the outpatient healthcare portion, since it has the equipment and staff to handle just about any outpatient procedure the local community needs, with the exception of fluoroscopy (injecting dyes into the body to look at internal issues). Those will continue to be done at the hospital facility on South Washington Street.

Van Wert Health’s 1.2-tesla MRI machine is the absolute best open MRI on the market, Pope said, with images dramatically better than a .6-tesla machine, for instance.

“Someone once explained it to me as being the difference between an abstract painting and a photograph,” he noted of the improved image quality.

More importantly, using the MRI at Van Wert Health North will be cost-effective, compared to other MRIs in the area. Pope said the cost would be, at most, $600. While that’s not cheap, it’s significantly less than the $1,200 to $1,500 most area hospitals charge, he added.

“We’re going to compete on price,” Pope said, noting that being competitive on healthcare pricing is something the local hospital organization needs to work on — especially since people today generally have much bigger deductibles and co-pays than in the past.

“That means that so much of the upfront cost of healthcare is coming out of every individual’s pocket; not the insurance companies, the individual,” he said.

The idea, of course, is to be more cost-effective while also improving the level of healthcare offered locally. Pope believes that doing both of those things should be an incentive for local patients to return to the Van Wert Health organization.

Implementation of the Epic healthcare software system was also an important move for the local hospital, Pope said, noting that Van Wert Health made the move in partnership with Ohio State University, and will be on OSU’s own Epic system.

“That means if you’re a patient at Ohio State, your patient records will already be available there,” the Van Wert Health CEO explained, noting that Parkview Regional Medical Center in Fort Wayne, Indiana, and St. Rita’s Medical Center in Lima also use Epic software, making it easy to share patient records electronically with those healthcare systems.

Another area the Van Wert Health strategic plan will address is the surgical services area, Pope said. With more and larger equipment in today’s operating rooms, as well as more surgical staff, more space is needed than when Van Wert Health’s surgical suites were built in the late 1950s and early 1960s.

“We know that we need more surgical space and larger surgery rooms,” he said, adding that planning is already underway to enlarge and improve Van Wert Health’s operating suites.

In addition, the hospital’s inpatient facilities also need improving, because of the amount of equipment now needed in modern hospital rooms. That piece will be a challenge, Pope acknowledged, noting that, with an aging physical plant that was first built in the 1950s, “we have a lot more opportunities than the finances to pay for them.”

Physician recruitment has also been going well, the Van Wert Health CEO said, noting that Van Wert native and surgeon Dr. Jeramy Stoller has returned to the area, while a husband-and-wife OB-GYN team will also be on board by early autumn.

“From that perspective, we are continuing to move forward,” Pope said.

In addition to improving facilities and patient software, the hospital is also implementing a healthcare quality program as well, with the goal of providing the best quality healthcare possible to its patients.

Pope said Van Wert Health has implemented a “high reliability” program that he feels will significantly improve the quality of healthcare provided locally. The system, similar to one developed by the aviation industry that has led that industry to nearly error-free operations, provides a number of quality checklists, including two-factor identification and “timeout” periods to ensure that every member of a patient’s healthcare team is on the same page.

Pope said the ultimate goal is to be the best community hospital — period — and the first choice for healthcare in the region.

“We know we’re not the best community hospital, but that’s our goal,” he said, noting that he also knows that the local hospital can’t handle every healthcare need, but feels it can be the first place local patients go when they have a health issue.

“We can’t do everything, but we can get you to where you need to go if we can’t do it,” Pope said.

POSTED: 06/18/18 at 7:37 am. FILED UNDER: News