NBHH group takes road trip to Kansas City awards banquet
About a dozen North Big Horn Hospital employees and two hospital board members boarded a bus and headed east to Kansas City recently to attend an awards banquet where the district was named as one of the top 20 critical access hospitals in the country by the National Rural Health Association. Hospital CEO Eric Connell had been notified earlier this year that the hospital district won the award.
“(Trustees) Dave Winterholler joined Mary Matthews and members of the NBHHD team in Kansas City for the Top 20 awards banquet,” Connell reported to the board at its most recent meeting. “It was great to be able to represent our community and our state on a national level. The bus was not quite the VIP level travel coach that we had imagined it would be. It was more like a Greyhound bus, but without the comfortable temperatures and flushing toilet. Memories were certainly made!”
Top 20 awards are given by the National Rural Health Association (NRHA), an industry group that focuses on advocacy, health care quality and safety. The award is based on data collected by the Chartis organization in eight categories: inpatient market share, outpatient market share, quality, outcomes, patient perspective, cost, charge and finance. North Big Horn won in the top 20 ranking based on quality.
The NBHH group was one of the largest attending, compared to other hospitals who made the list. The hospital’s quality director, Catherine Herman, accepted the award on behalf of the group. Herman is tasked with compiling the mandatory quality data submitted on behalf of the hospital, as well as survey data for the emergency room, clinic and operating room.