Sitting down to write this column, I realized we are more than a month into 2024. Where does the time go? Why does it go so fast? Our youngest cat, Burtie, seemingly became a big girl overnight, and I truly don’t know how that happened! I swear she was a kitten on New Year’s Eve.
Similarly, 2024 has already been a year of growth for Eureka Springs Hospital. We received the news in January that the State of Arkansas and Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) approved our application to change our designation from a Critical Access Hospital to a Rural Emergency Hospital (REH).
We’ve kept y’all updated on the designation change since our commission voted last October to become an REH facility. For those of you who haven’t seen the news, I’m ecstatic to share exactly what it means for our hospital and rural healthcare in Carroll County.
The major change our REH designation has brought is the elimination of our long-term inpatient and Swing Bed services. I’ve heard from some of y’all about how much you value our inpatient care. A few people have reached out to me personally to ask why we chose to move forward with the designation change, knowing we would no longer offer long-term inpatient care.
In truth, we’ve been operating under this model for the past few years. The census for long-term inpatient care and our Swing Bed program has consistently decreased. To be frank, we haven’t seen the demand for long-term inpatient care for quite some time.
Meanwhile, our community has continued to use our emergency room and outpatient services. Our emergency room is open all the time, and we are strokeand trauma-certified. We follow a specific protocol for stroke patients to ensure their chances of recovery are as high as possible.
Our staff knows what to do in an emergency. More importantly, they know how important it is to be kind to patients. I call our ER patients the day after their visit to check in. So many of them are quick to compliment the empathetic care they received from our staff.
Additionally, we offer several outpatient services: radiology scans, speech therapy, physical therapy, lab tests and endoscopy surgery. Our patients frequently mention how our staff gives personalized care for routine outpatient services. It’s something they do every day, and every day, they do it with a smile.
We chose to change our designation because that’s where rural healthcare is headed, and keeping up with the changing healthcare landscape means we can keep taking care of our community for years to come. The designation change also brings the opportunity to expand and improve our emergency and outpatient services – I’ll keep y’all updated on that over the next few months.
One thing that has not and will never change is our dedication to everyone who lives in and visits Carroll County. We are part of our community. We love our community. We know our patients and we know their families. Our patients are part of our family – everyone who walks through our door is.
We changed our designation to ensure our longevity in the community, to ensure that we can keep taking care of our family. That’s what we’ve always done, and it’s what we’ll keep doing. I thank everyone who has been supportive of our hospital. It means more than you know.
We welcome everyone to join us at a Town Hall meeting on Thursday, March 14, at 2 p.m. at the Auditorium to talk about the designation change and the state of rural healthcare. If you have any questions or would like to talk about the future of our hospital, please reach out to me in the meantime. I’m excited to hear from you!
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Samantha Jones is marketing director for Eureka Springs Hospital. You can reach her by calling 479253-7400 ext. 4802 or emailing Samantha. Jones@EurekaSpringsHospital.
com.
