RCHC checks in to delivering babies

?Investigating the possibility of reinstating obstetrics into the services offered at Rawlins County Health Center occupied board members during their March 8 meeting.
Dr. Gary Slavens of Colby expressed an interest in practicing in Atwood if he could deliver babies and a group of his patients have been encouraging board members.
Delivering babies requires a surgical area in the event of a Caesarean section. Dr. Slavens said he could do the surgery but would require an anesthetist as well as trained assistants.
“We’re waiting on Dr. Slavens to do some paper work and to schedule time for a walk-through of the facility and discuss space and equipment needs for obstetrics,” Administrator Deanna Freeman said.
Freeman also reported to the board on the pre-construction meeting held March 5 with Westley Kendall from Pioneer Development, who is in charge of the Community Development Block Grant that will finance the hospital entry project. Architect Grant Creager and Simon Contractors were also there and completed plans to begin construction on that project and the physical therapy/cardio addition in late April. All financing is in place and the projects are to be completed in approximately 200 days.
Julie Britton said plans were complete for the RCHC health fair to be held March 18 at the grade school gym.
“We plan to begin at 6 a.m. and end at noon,” Britton said. “It is shaping up to be a big event with 24 exhibitors. We have a drawing for a television at noon and there will be a blood chemistry profile of 31 tests for $29 available.”

Hospital answeres digital call to arms

?Members of the Rawlins County Health Center team are stitching together a solid plan to move this rural hospital safely into electronic medical recording.
“This is an ongoing process,” Administrator Deanna Freeman said. “Currently, we are using electronic records for nursing documentation, laboratory, order communication, repository and scheduling. The next process is to implement the pharmacy.”
Kansas has a team of 26 health care lawyers working to align state laws with HIPAA, the Health Insurance Portability and Accountably Act. They are trying to put in firewalls, determining who will be in charge of information and when the patient will be notified that their information is being put into the health information system.
Oversight for the large-scale health information exchange project in Kansas comes from the Kansas Department of Health and Environment.
An E-Health Advisory Council is regularly convening representatives from nearly three dozen health-care-related organizations in the state.
The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 authorized money for grants for the digitization of health records. Financial incentives will include higher reimbursements for Medicare and Medicaid to hospitals that digitize.
Karla Heble, RN, director of nursing, Mary Clark, RN in pharmacy and Craig Cole, MLT/IT have been active members of the core teams helping to develop software for hospitals affiliated with GPHA. An IT committee from RCHC is working with Midwest Health Systems to implement getting electronic records into the hospitals.

High-impact Save a Life Tour
to headline Town Hall Meeting

?They are called ‘the shock jocks of anti-drunk driving.”
The Save a Life Tour, a high-impact alcohol awareness team with state-of-the-art drinking and driving simulators, will highlight Rawlins County’s 2010 Town Hall Meeting, set for Tuesday, March 23 in the Rawlins County High School gymnasium.
Exciting door prizes await the public at the evening presentation, with a new laptop computer heading the list of give-aways at this 5th annual Town Hall Meeting.
This is a free educational event sponsored annually by the Rawlins County Ministerial Alliance and the Rawlins County Community Prevention Board, with support from community service organizations and businesses.

Experience the simulators

The Save a Life Tour’s multi-million-dollar drinking and driving simulators are the only simulators in the nation that give participants a completely realistic, sober perspective on the effects of driving while intoxicated.
In Rawlins County, the public is invited to experience these simulators from 3:30 to 6 p.m., March 23.
High school students will be offered the opportunity to experience the simulators during school hours that day.
The Save a Life Tour team will headline the evening presentation, which is set to last one hour. The team’s presentation will be followed by the door prize drawings.

‘A new approach’

The National Save a Life Tour, headquartered in Grand Rapids, Mich., takes a new and radical approach to drinking and driving awareness.
“Gone are the days when a tall cop with a shiny badge tries to scare people into listening,” online tour promotionals state.
The Save a Life Tour has earned national acclaim from colleges, universities, high schools and military events nationwide.
Local Town Hall Meeting sponsors anticipate that no one who experiences the Save a Life Tour will leave unaffected.
Rawlins County’s annual Town Hall Meeting brings youth and adults of all ages together for an informative presentation geared toward improving community living and health of residents.
This year, generous support from the community is helping the two organizations to bring this high-level presentation to the county.

High Plains Food Co-op grows
with strong consumer demand

?The High Plains Food Cooperative began as a seed of an idea planted during a food workshop in Lindsborg in 2005. Chris and Sherri Schmidt, Rawlins County food producers, attended a two-day conference that offered “exciting opportunities to food producers seeking new markets built through direct sales, agri-tourism and building community food systems.”
The Schmidts, co-owners of Schmidt’s Premium Beef, were already marketing their hormone-free beef in the Denver area.
After hearing about the Oklahoma food cooperative and its successes the Schmidts produced an enthusiastic wave of excitement about the possibilities of a Northwest Kansas-based food cooperative. The wave continued to swell and grow.
After a March 2008 workshop in Atwood that cultivated a large crowd of food producers from five states, the food coop steering committee announced website www.highplainsfood.org had been launched. Several producers signed on for a lifetime membership fee of $100.
The coop has two vehicles picking up produce and hauling it to four distribution sites. The downtown Denver site is the big one, according to Chris Sramek, the cooperative board’s consumer president.
The co-op is a win-win situation for consumers and producers, Sramek said.
“People want locally grown food,” he said. “They want to know where and who the items come from.
“The co-op provides diversity for smaller farmers,” Sramek continued. “We can bring a kid back to the farm; they can survive without a second job. It is really good support for smaller family farms.”
The majority of the consumers are younger people, he said.
For more information about the healthy food and locally grown products that are available online, go to www.highplainsfood.org or contact Sramek at 785-626-8066.

Full stories in this week's Square Deal.

Courtesy of Beardsley Equity
WHEAT: $3.83; MILO: $2.79; CORN: $3.09