Healthcare in the digital age

It doesn’t matter where she is, Marcia Hendricks has the ability from her fingertips to log on to networks at either the Madison County or Adair County Health Systems campuses whenever she needs to.

Hendricks became CEO of both health systems in 2016 after she served in that role for 13 years prior in Madison County alone.

The Earlham native says with a good staff of almost 300 between both sites and expanded technology that allows small, rural hospitals to remain viable, she feels well armed to help lead both health systems in a good direction well into the future.

Hendricks is the first subject of a “People of Adair County” series that will appear throughout 2019.

The biggest challenge for Hendricks in the beginning was developing relationships, but again, she said technology helps her feel like she’s working in both hospitals everyday.

In reality, Hendricks spends Tuesdays and Wednesdays in Greenfield, Mondays and Thursdays in Winterset and alternates Fridays between both hospitals.

Both hospitals are part of the Mercy Health Network, which makes way for several other shared opportunities, like team building for the leadership teams, shared branding, policies, contracts and more.

“The hope is that people get the same high quality care in all Mercy facilities. That’s our goal,” Hendricks said. “I really don’t look at Adair County and Madison County as two hospitals anymore, I look at it that I have 50 beds and just under 300 employees. While there are differences, there is more and more standardization all the time.

Hendricks says that 20 years ago, doing what she does would have been very hard.

“Every policy was on paper, every contract was on paper. Now, everything’s online,” Hendricks said. “If I want to look at a contract over here or over there then answer a phone call or deal with something, I don’t have to wait till I come back to Greenfield to deal with that.”

Since a drastic hike in population for Madison and Adair Counties isn’t in the foreseeable future, impatient numbers in hospitals aren’t due for a major hike either. That means hospitals, which have to make ends meet too, are focusing on keeping outpatient offerings up in their own facilities despite some patients choosing to drive a few extra miles to receive care in places like Des Moines.

Other hurdles Hendricks has to guide her hospital over are the challenges that come with Medicaid managed care and with maintaining and securing the technologies that keep the hospital going.

“We spend so much money on protecting our healthcare records, yet it’s the one thing that keeps me up at night more than anything else. Every single day, you hear about a breach in healthcare or wherever. You spend all this money on keeping that from happening and yet there are people who have more time than we do [to hack in],” Hendricks said. “I’d say that if there’s one area of healthcare that’s concerning or is a challenge, I’d say it’s I.T.”

Madison County Health Systems recently invested in a software called Cerner that Adair County already utilizes.

“That was a $1.6 million spend, and that’s just the software. That’s not including the hundreds of thousands of dollars to maintain it and all of that,” Hendricks said. “It’s a huge chunk of money and every time there’s a new regulation or some change then you have to purchase something from the software company so you can get it programmed in and comply with that new regulation. That happens every year.”

ACHS’s goal of providing more and more outpatient services seems to be working. The week before Christmas, Hendricks says Adair County’s hospital saw as many as 10 to 12 new patients a week in urgent care.

“People in small communities have to be realistic about what their hospital is and what it will be someday. I don’t see our patient population growing a great deal because no insurance company, nor does Medicare, want to pay for inpatient stays,” Hendricks said. “We’re always looking for what we can do to keep people here. If we have 10 new people who are signed into our system, that doesn’t mean all of them will come back to us for their primary care needs, but if one or two of those folks say they’re going to receive their care here because they had a good experience, then that’s a really big deal for us in the long run. That keeps me hopeful there are patients that will come here that haven’t been coming here and it grows our services.”