Boundary Community Hospital navigates its way through challenges

This past year has certainly been one that none of us will forget.

As I was prepared to settle into my first year as CEO of Boundary Community Hospital, I anticipated a lot of my time and energy would be spent on learning, and it was, just not in the way I expected. I had expected I would not only learn about our great hospital organization, but more about the community we serve, the community I now call home. I hoped to work with key stakeholders to develop a strategic plan that would serve as the framework of how we would organize our efforts going forward.

Instead, we were quickly thrown into uncharted territory, taking on the responsibility of responding to the COVID-19 pandemic. While we certainly had our moments of tension and heightened anxiety, I couldn’t be prouder of our Boundary Community Hospital family and the way in which everyone stepped up to help our community. We went into emergency operations on March 17, 2020, and our incident command (also known as our COVID-19 Task Force) has met regularly ever since. This group has been able to address and troubleshoot various logistics and guide decision making.

We saw our laboratory step up and offer comprehensive testing services, our Emergency Department developed protocols that would allow us to provide care safely to COVID-19 positive patients as well as protect others during their treatment. Our Infection Control nurse helped guide the implementation of procedures that would help keep our patients, residents, and staff safe as well.

I only name a few, but there isn’t a single person or department who wasn’t instrumental in the way in which we were able to respond to the needs of our community during this time. I couldn’t be more proud of our team for helping to make Boundary Community Hospital a safe place to receive excellent care!

I know how exhausting the year has been, and like many of you, I am hopeful that this will soon be behind us. We made the decision in the fall of 2020 to re-focus on strategic planning and to devote time and effort into planning for our future, all while continuing to manage the implications of the pandemic. As a result, our board of trustees has approved a three-year strategic plan that I am very excited to implement. The key takeaways of the plan are a focus on three strategic priorities: focus on relationships, prepare for the growing demands of healthcare in our community, and develop a long-term facility and financial strategy.

To elaborate, Boundary Community Hospital will be focusing on how we relate to others, which includes relationships with co-workers, patients, physicians, and the community at large. Building and developing strong relationships is a very important part of our mission to care for our community every day, and this will be central to all we are doing going forward. Secondly, our community is changing. We are not only seeing growth, but we are seeing a change to our local demographics so we need to be mindful of these changes and evaluate the services we provide and determine if we’re providing the right services to the community, and what may be missing.

We want to ensure that our community members have access to excellent care locally and when there’s a need we can’t meet, we need to be sure we have the relationships in place to get individuals connected with the right care teams for their circumstances.

Lastly, we are focused on evaluating our financial position including our greatest asset, our physical plant. Our facility is aging and with potential growth, we need to develop a plan to ensure we can accommodate the future healthcare needs locally. We also need to ensure that we have the financial support to embark upon these future endeavors and ensure the viability of healthcare services in Boundary County for years to come. That is a huge responsibility and one that will be an ongoing topic while we implement the components of our strategic plan.

While these priorities are broad, I hope they will give the community perspective on what we’ll be focusing on over the next several years. We all appreciate the community support we regularly receive and I look forward to continuing to serve this great community that I am fortunate to call home.

Preston Becker is chief executive officer for Boundary Community Hospital.