Rotary Club of Casper WY
Meeting Summary
05/24/2021
President Lisa Scroggins called our hybrid zoom/in person meeting to order promptly at 12:18, and welcomed everyone to today’s meeting.
Inspiration, Pledge, 4-Way Test:
David Heflin
Greeters and guests:
Pinky Ellis and Sabrina Kemper were our greeters and Sabrina introduced the guests.
- Mike Howe introduced Brent Pickett (UW Casper);
- Anthony Martinez introduced Laurie Morgan (Three Crowns);
- Lori Klatt introduced Mindi Pile (Summit Medical);
- Matt Grant introduced Julie Lemaster (Advanced Geotechnical Services);
- Katie Caldwell introduced Ashley Vondra (New York Life);
- Miamie Sleep introduced Linda Terrell (KCWY);
- On zoom Morgan Hughes (Casper Star Tribune);
- Visiting Rotarians, Robin Mundell (Reveille) Ryan Stepp online (Five Trails);
Family of Rotary:
President Lisa let us know that there are cards going around for Susan Thomas who is recovering from surgery, please sign one of them if you have not yet.
Bill DeGraeve let us know that Cathy Mortimer wants us to know that there will be a memorial service for Bill, to be held at the National Historic Trails Center June 26th from 2-4 PM.
Rotarians of the Week:
Mike Howe nominated Mark Owens for volunteering to run the tech for us.
President Lisa nominated everyone who attended the District Conference this past weekend.
Megan Miller nominated those who helped with Proud to Host the Best, President Lisa Scroggins , Jim Ruble, Tammi Chappell, Luke Gilliam as well as Megan Miller.
Dan O’Dell in a very dramatic way, accompanied by cowboys and cowgirls prancing around the room, announced the Golf Tournament July 31st. One of the things the Golf tournament supports is Shelter Box, the other is Polio eradication, so please help us support this great event.
Eric Easton announced the Parkway Trails cleanup will be this Saturday May 29, there are flyers on the table so please sign up or contact Eric. Anyone is invited to help so bring family and friends.
Hal Hutchinson announced that we will be having our Highway Cleanup on Thursday June 3rd 5:30, right after work. We will meet across the highway from the main entrance of the airport by SST Energy and Brad Cundy will be hosting a BBQ afterwards. Everyone is invited to the BBQ so let them know if you can make that as well. We need more volunteers as last week only 7 people signed up and we need 20-30.
Vickery Fales Hall announced we have the opportunity to go do cleanup and perform maintenance on Crossroads Adventure Park on Saturday June 12, so pencil this in to your calendar.
President Lisa read us a thank you note from last week’s Student of the Month.
Membership:
Program (CEO of WMC):
PE Mike Howe introduced our guest speaker today, Lance Porter, CEO of WMC. Lance was transferred here from Phoenix and is loving living here, the wind doesn’t even bother him, except for when dealing with vehicles in parking lots. He has worked for Banner Health for quite a while and with Banner purchasing WMC they transferred him here to run WMC. He started his career as a speech therapist but got interested and involved in all other aspects so he went back and got more degrees so he can now run a hospital. He has worked all sizes and types of hospitals so he is well versed in running things and has been through Covid surges in AZ and also one here in Casper.
Banner is a not for profit that runs 30 hospitals but is seeing that healthcare is a continuum, so they are now focusing on all aspects of healthcare from pre to post hospitalization through owning clinics, and urgent cares, as well as rehab hospitals in order to be fully involved with all aspects of their patient’s healthcare. They do not plan on building a rehab hospital here as they have a great relationship with Elkhorn already. They have also just started an insurance product. This approach is much better for the hospital as well as the patient. Banner also owns hospitals in Worland, Wheatland, and Torrington. The reason is to be able to partner with those hospitals when they need a place to send patients to so they have WMC as a hub to take better care of Wyoming people and to keep Wyoming patients in Wyoming. There are some things they can’t handle but they are partnering with Hospitals in CO and UT for those things until they grow to the point that they can handle all needs.
Banner is adding to WMC, and was already impressed with everything that WMC already has to offer. They are also getting the word out to the rest of the state so they know what great services WMC can provide. WMC has for the third time in a row received an A grade from Leap Frog, who rate hospitals. Hospital Prepare, run by Medicare gives them the average grade of three star, but they are working to improve that to a four-star grade because Wyoming and Casper deserve to have a top graded hospital. He said that they have a top certified Cath Lab, and a certified bariatric center, such that Banner was so impressed with it that they are now modeling their other hospital’s centers after this one. They do robotics surgeries, advanced heart surgeries and interventional radiology, all of these things are not typically seen in a 200 bed hospital. They are a level two trauma center; all of these things were here already so Banner was very excited to become a part of WMC.
Banner is good at managing core operations and building hospitals where needed. They focus on four major service lines, Ortho and Trauma, Cardiovascular, Oncology, and Pediatrics, women and infant health. They are looking at these four pillars to determine what the needs are here that they can safely implement to keep Wyoming people from having to go to CO or UT for these needs. To attract the specialists, they need is very difficult so they do a good job with Telemed and satellite clinics to bring talent in from other areas, they are looking to expand these even more. There goal is to be the tertiary referral center for all of Wyoming. When he got here they were turning away 30-40 patients a month but since January they turn away very few as they ramped up their staff and have made it a priority to be able to take more patients, they will continue to grow in order to improve even more.
Stand alone hospitals are going away because of the costs involved in running a hospital, the purchasing power of larger companies owning more hospitals is key to keeping costs down for everyone. They saw over 1205 Covid patients of which most were during November, they had a full hospital and had to open additional ICU rooms, all of their ventilators were in use. This is when they saw the advantages of being part of Banner Health. Banner sent staff from other hospitals, 17 more beds, 13 ventilators and 10 bipap machines in order to take care of the patients they had. This saved people’s lives. They also sent up tons of PPE that they had available in their supply chain.
He gave a Covid Update and showed us the graph of Covid cases. He said they are watching CO very closely as they are having a small surge with other variants. In the beginning, most of the cases were the older people 65 and older. He said that about 85% of the older individuals have been vaccinated and so the age group now being admitted is the 40-60 age group. Covid is still in our community but the trends are going down. Vaccination rates, Wyoming is one of the lowest States for these rates. We need to get more people vaccinated. In the hospital if you go there you still have to wear a mask, also in most healthcare facilities so be prepared and be patient.
He said that the mask wearing cut down immensely on flu cases this past year, so if you don’t wear a mask for Covid you should understand that the masks did slow down all other infections like flu.
He opened it for questions, Robin Mundell asked about plans for a NICU, he said that they are partnering with Children’s Hospital in CO currently but they are working on bringing a NICU here eventually.
Another question was asked about keeping more Wyoming patients in Wyoming instead of in CO. He said that he is speaking with other hospitals in the State about all of the services that are offered through WMC and doing his best to get them to partner with them so that more patients can be taken care of in Wyoming. They want to partner with these other hospitals around the State as much as possible.
He was also asked about the relationship with the WMC Foundation and indigent care. He said that the Foundation was spun off from WMC when Banner made the purchase, so the Foundation is currently looking to staff the foundation and they are looking at how they can use the money they have in order to serve the community. Beth Worthen is the Board President and they have been working together to see what they can do together. As far as indigent care, Banner continues to honor the commitment to provide care without charging the County for any of that care.
He was asked if we would see any outsourcing of jobs, he said that that has been in the forefront of concerns. They are currently job mapping, figuring out what jobs are here, pay rates and pay practices and matching them up so they can see what the impact will be. They do not have the data yet but hope to have it all by July. He said that the frontline people should not be impacted, the bigger risk is for some of the administrative areas.
He was asked about booster shots and if the clinics will reach out to the people who have been vaccinated already and will need a booster. He said that this will be the plan but nobody knows yet if a booster will be needed.
President Lisa Scroggins concluded the meeting at 1:10, she let us know that next week, we will not have a meeting due to Memorial Day. The following week will be the City of Mills talking about their 100-year celebration.
“Rotary Opens Opportunities”
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Leadership from the City of Mills will be presenting on the current state of the City, the future of Mills, and most importantly on the 100th Anniversary Celebration.
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