It was a year of growth and change for Good Shepherd Health Care System, according to CEO Dennis Burke.

Burke shared the hospital’s progress over the 2017-18 fiscal year at a community meeting Wednesday night that included a health fair and a talk by health expert Joe Piscatella.

Good Shepherd now has more than 700 employees and 50 volunteers, with an annual payroll of more than $43 million. The hospital has seen a significant increase in patient satisfaction scores. And while about one-third of Oregon’s hospitals are operating in the red right now, Burke said, GSHCS is doing well financially.

“We’re in a very sound fiscal state,” he said. “I think we have a lot of staying power.”

Over the past year, GSHCS opened a 33,000-square-foot wing that includes a new women’s center — a total investment of about $12 million. It also opened a new urology suite, added chiropractic medicine, remodeled the home medical equipment store, purchased new state-of-the-art equipment and acquired Gifford Medical’s urgent care and private practice clinic.

On the programs side, GSHCS launched a personal home care service, a home respiratory care service and expanded offerings in areas, such as speech therapy and diabetes management. Burke said in the past year the education department had a total of 3,192 educational classes or events, reaching more than 16,000 people.

“I’m not aware of any hospital — our size, certainly, but any hospital — that does more in terms of educational events than we do,” he said.

Burke also shared successes in receiving new awards and certifications, and reaching new standards of patient care. For example, Good Shepherd Medical Group scored a 97.2 out of 100 under a Medicare/Medicaid incentive program that will reward the clinics with additional reimbursement funds for their quality care, improvement, efficiency and engagement.

Good Shepherd did have some setbacks in the last year. A construction-related fire in April caused “several million dollars” worth of damage to the hospital and equipment stored above the fire. Burke also noted an increase in emergency room visits from 19,818 to 20,890.

“That’s something we try to keep down,” he said.

Future improvements

Looking toward the future, Burke said GSHCS was just 10 days away from the launch of its new patient records program, Epic. As part of that launch, patients will have access to a “superb” online patient portal that will give them 24/7 access to medical records and lab results, the ability to schedule their own appointments and to request prescription refills online.

Good Shepherd is also working on creation of a comprehensive pain-management program that will provide alternatives to opioids. Interwoven with that effort is the hospital’s goal of creating an “industrial medicine” program targeted specifically to the needs of area employees in manufacturing and shipping who experience chronic pain or are at risk of job-related injuries.

Burke said GSHCS plans to keep Gifford’s urgent care clinic open seven days a week soon and will continue pushing awareness of its virtual care clinic as another alternative to ER visits on weekends. In addition, they plan to start their own family practice clinic and recruit more physicians and other providers to the area.

“We’re probably about 15 physicians short of what we need in the community,” he said.

To help with that, Good Shepherd is partnering with St. Anthony Hospital in Pendleton and Kadlec Regional Medical Center in the Tri-Cities to create a rural residency program for doctors in training.

Community meeting

Before the update on GSHCS program, attendees were given time to browse a health fair. Booths ranged from free flu shots and screenings to information on first aid, reporting sexual assault and hospice.

Dawn Germain and Lianna Correa joked that their booth was too scary for most of the men.

“They see the word ‘lactation’ and they run away,” Correa said.

The booth drew a number of interested women, however, who learned more about the hospital’s lactation assistance services. Germain said they visit new mothers on the maternity ward and also work with pediatricians to find women who need assistance with breast-feeding. The hospital also facilitates donations by women producing excess breast milk. GSHCS pays for all of the necessary collection and lab testing, then turns the milk over to a statewide bank that distributes it to neonatal intensive care units.

After the health fair attendees listened to a free presentation by Piscatella, a best-selling author on healthy lifestyles and president of the Institute for Fitness and Health.

Piscatella started on his health journey when he had to have coronary bypass surgery at age 32. Afterward, he asked a doctor what he should change in his life and the doctor told him that with his condition he would probably be dead before 40 no matter what so he might as well eat what he wanted. Piscatella’s wife had different advice — she told him he couldn’t change the cards he was dealt, but he could change how he played them. He dedicated himself to healthy living and 41 years later he is still active.

He told listeners Wednesday that lifestyle comes down to five factors: diet, exercise, smoking, attitude and stress. He said focusing on one area won’t undo the damage of neglecting another.

“There is no magic in being a sedentary vegetarian,” he said. “There are no trade-offs. It’s a package deal that can put us on the road to health or can put us on the road to disaster.”

He used the example of Jim Fixx, author of “The Complete Book of Running.” Piscatella once sat on a panel with Fixx, who told him that he ate what he wanted because he burned it all up running many miles per day. Piscatella argued with him that he may be building a healthy heart muscle with the running, but that wouldn’t keep spaghetti-thin arteries from getting clogged. Fixx later died of a heart attack at age 52.

Piscatella provided advice about each of the five factors to a healthy lifestyle, suggesting people schedule their exercise like they do a business appointment and sharing that frequent episodes of anger and hostility significantly raise the chance of a heart attack.

He said stress management is critical because stress affects all the other areas. People don’t go to the gym, for example, because they’re too mentally tired after a day sitting in a chair at the office. One of his top tips for stress management was turning off the television news and only getting news from a newspaper instead. He also taught the audience a deep-breathing technique and said constantly checking work emails at all hours was also ratcheting up society’s stress levels.

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Contact Jade McDowell at jmcdowell@eastoregonian.com or 541-564-4536.