DARLINGTON — Last week, the boards for Lafayette Hospital and Clinic and Upland Hills Health held a joint meeting at the new hospital in Darlington to discuss the new facility, and how they may be able to work together in the future.
“I think its important the two boards understood the value they have for each other,” said Upland Hills CEO Lisa Schnedler, who is retiring this year after 13 years at the helm.
“We just wanted to see what’s going on here,” added Upland Hills Board Chair Jim Massey.
Upland Hills and Lafayette Hospital partner in a few areas, most notably for OBGYN services, as Lafayette Hospital did not have the volume to offer delivery services, other than emergency deliveries in the emergency room.
“Partnering with our neighbors is crucial,” Lafayette CEO Marie Wamsley stated.
Cooperation for rural healthcare facilities was important, a sentiment shared by both boards.
Lafayette County Supervisor Jed Gant, who joked with the Upland Hills Board that he was born in their facility back when it was St. Joe’s, had a number of his descendants born at Upland Hills, and the importance of having the medical centers in the rural areas was it meant residents didn’t have to travel great distances to get medical services.
“We can offer just as good as service as anywhere else,” Gant said of the two hospitals. Gant was not concerned about the two facilities competing against one another, as they both covered residents, from the very young, to those in their senior years.
“If you can get services here in rural Wisconsin, everyone can grow,” Gant shared.
With both facilities being critical access hospitals, keeping them running means when individuals are having emergencies, they do not have far to travel.
“We want to make sure our patients don’t have to travel a long distance,” Wamsley added.
The two groups talked about setup of their boards — both have community lay members as part of the board. For Upland Hills, they look to have a representative of each community they have a clinic in.
For Lafayette County, Board Chair Jack Sauer said they added lay members to the hospital board a couple of years ago. “You get a different perspective,” Sauer shared, noting people may talk about issues to a person not on the county board.
The two boards talked about needs and future pursuits. Discussions on physical therapy, on dietary specialists, on oncology.
Wamsley led the two boards through a tour of most of the new facility, which is the lone county-owned hospital in operation in Wisconsin. Wamsley showed off the physical therapy department, which she quipped had only curtains separating spaces for individual sessions, but now has rooms in addition to a large gym space with specialized equipment for therapy.
Wamsley spotlighted a transforming stair apparatus, built by students at UW-Platteville, which allows for individuals to attempt different exercises during their therapy.
Across from the physical therapy section was the eyecare center, before they moved to the lab and spoke a moment about the draw room for samples. Wamsley noted the room was a huge improvement over their past draw room, which Sauer quipped was a converted closet, and had utility pipes running next to where the patients sat to get blood taken.
In the surgical section, Wamsley said the most significant change between the old facility and the new one, where there are pre- and post-operation rooms for patients. In the old facility, the patients would stay in rooms, and then be brought to the operating room, and when their surgery was completed, returned to their rooms, being escorted through the hospital.
This new setup allows for additional privacy for patients, but it has been a learning curve at first for staff, as the inpatient team used to assist with care for those patients.
When the group visited the MRI and CT lab, Sauer noted the importance of the facilities, and gave praise to U.S. Sen. Tammy Baldwin for her efforts to get funding for the MRI installation.
“She got us the money,” Sauer stated, noting he had her in tears for how much he praised her during the ribbon cutting.
Wamsley said that in addition to having the MRI in the building and accessible all the time, it also meant they didn’t have to move it, like in the old facility when it was a visiting truck, and they had six minutes to pull it out of the parking lot if they were having MedFlight landing.
In the inpatient area, Wamsley noted she was very proud of the tranquility room, a quiet space for family members to go to when dealing with emotional or painful moments, anything from pondering moments while waiting for their loved one to get out of surgery, to dealing with a hard diagnosis.
The room has sound-absorbing tiles to allow for statements or emotion not to travel out of the room.
When showing off the rooms of the hospital, Wamsley said one of the important things was to give those staying there a view of the countryside. When a member of the Upland Hills Board asked about a walking path on the grounds, Wamsley joked they had not gotten the right donation yet to create one, but it is part of their plan.
