Author Archives: Joshua Lager

Nursing facilities are for residents whose needs are complex and need nursing care and supervision.

The Mountrail Bethel Home is dedicated to providing quality care to its residents. It prides itself on being a wonderful place to call home with 24 hour care and high staff to resident ratio. It is a 52 bed skilled nursing facility. It features semi-private rooms with shared bath, private rooms with a shared bath and private rooms with a private bath. Further safety measures, such as the use of Secure Care, provide essential protection to each resident in the Mountrail Bethel Home.

There are several steps that need to be taken to ensure your loved one is in need of nursing home care. Step One would be to contact Kelly Gustavson at 628-2442, ext. 118. Step Two will be for her to confirm payer source. There are mainly three sources we accept in our home. They are Long Term Care insurance, Medicaid or Private Pay. Long Term Care insurance and Medicaid patients need to meet a certain level of care in order to be placed in the Nursing Home. Self pay does not need to meet any sort of level of care. Medicare does cover, but for a limited number of days. Step Three is the collecting of medical records of the resident wanting into the Nursing Home. Step Four is the review of Steps Two and Three by an Admission Team that makes the final decision on if a resident can come into the Mountrail Bethel Home. There runs a risk of denial if we feel we cannot safely care for your family member, if a Medicaid patient does not meet the level of care that Medicaid will pay for or if there are no funds available to pay for services provided monthly for a resident.

The Mountrail Bethel Home currently has openings available at the facility. Please contact Kelly with any of your needs. Or if you want further information in regards to where your loved one fits on the Long Term Care Decision tree please go to https://carechoice.nd.assistguide.net/

A visit with your provider in the clinic could produce three different statements, depending on what you had done during your visit. The doctor’s visit will be billed through our clinic (Mountrail County Medical Clinic) electronic health records, Athena Health. But if you have any testing, lab or radiology completed during this visit, this will be billed through the hospital (Mountrail County Medical Center) electronic health records, Patient Co.

The Mountrail County Medical Center has a full in-house lab and radiology department that is here for your lab and X-ray needs. This includes CT, X-Rays, blood work, urine and EKGs. Pap smears, biopsies and certain specialty testing completed during your visit at the clinic are sent out to Trinity or even Mayo, if needed.

All X-Rays taken at MCMC are sent to Trinity’s radiology department to be read by a radiologist. All blood smears taken at MCMC are sent to Trinity’s pathology department to be read by a pathologist. All EKGs/ECGs taken at MCMC are sent to Trinity’s cardiology department to be read by a cardiologist. This partnership with Trinity leads to a billing statement for these services from Trinity anytime any of the above occurs.

If you should have any questions on any of this please contact MCMC. We thank you for your continued support. Nobody takes care of you like your own.

This week we are going to fill your mind with a few rarely talked about tidbits about our facility.

So, Did You Know That…

• The Mountrail County Health Center has 101 active computer workstations.
• There are over 200 “mice” in the building.
• We back up over a terabyte of information every 15 minutes.

We have 66 toilets in the facility that are cleaned daily.

So we are sure than you are wondering, ‘Wow, how much toilet paper do they go through then?’Well, we go through 4,160 rolls of toilet paper a year, 80 rolls per week. J

• The total of aspirin given each year to residents is 14,400 capsules.
• We make and serve 53,274 meals per year in the Bethel Home.
• We pour 199,655 scheduled beverages per year in the Bethel Home.This does not include the beverages served to the residents at snack time.This count is just for the daily meals.
• We go through 153,000 gallons of water per month by ONLY the Bethel Home.
• Our laundry ladies do 142,000 pounds of laundry per year for MBH and MCMC.

A CNA typically walks 15,000 steps, totaling 6-7 miles, while caring for the Bethel Home residents during an 8 hour shift.

The first resident at the Bethel Home was Victor Laukala, admitted in December of 1960.Since then, the Bethel Home has been called home to 1,042 residents.

Four hundred and forty seven donations have been made to the Mountrail County Health Foundation since the Capital Campaign started in the fall of 2013.A total of $3,592,042.65 has been donated.

The residents at the Bethel Home are SUPER competitive when it comes to Giant Yahtzee and Card Sharks.

Three thousand one hundred and fifty feet of hospital tubing is utilized per year.

• The average course of outpatient physical therapy is between 7-10 visits.

Even in the era of Electronic Health Records, the Medical Records department still goes through 3 reams of paper, totaling 1,500 pieces of paper per week. On average one patient visit accumulates 20 pages of paper due to printing to a fax or printing to mail out, plus the paper they get from the other departments to scan.

You can find this “Did You Know” and all past ones on our website at www.stanleyhealth.org.  We thank you for your continued support. We are always striving to do better.

Nobody takes care of you like your own.

August 17^th marked the “Go-Live” of our new Electronic Health Records (EHR) system.We have partnered with Trinity to be able to use their Cerner EHR program and the billing program of McKesson STAR.Focusing on the positives for the future, we are excited to be able to make needed changes to our portal and streamline our check-in and billing statement processes during all of this.The portal will allow more transparency and improve the ability to communicate with your provider.Details will be given once all items are finalized over the next couple of weeks.

Please bear with us as we move ahead with this new program.A few items will be needed at your future appointments at MCMC:

• Insurance cards
• Photo ID
• Updated addresses and phone numbers

We thank you for being patient with us over the past year while we made our way through some muddy waters with our previous EHR program.We are not looking back, but focusing on changes to make things better here at MCMC.

You can find this “Did You Know” and all past ones on our website at www.stanleyhealth.org.  We thank you for your continued support. We are always striving to do better.

Nobody takes care of you like your own.

The Mountrail County Medical Center is currently under an electronic health records (EHR) conversion. One item we need to have people be aware of is that the hospital and clinic are separate entities with services being billed out separately. It’s very similar to the fact that Trinity sends out bills for services rendered at the Hospital under one entity and services provided by the provider under another.

Our old EHR, Healthland, is producing statements for visits prior to June 23rd, 2015. These statements are coming from HRG (Healthcare Resource Group) and these statements will be postmarked from Spokane Valley, Washington.

Clinic services rendered on June 23rd, 2015 going forward are being billed through our new clinic EHR, Athena Health and these statements will be postmarked from Belfast, Maine.

Hospital services rendered on June 23rd, 2015 going forward are being billed through Patient Co. and these statements will be postmarked from our Stanley address.

In the very near future we hope to have our clinic and hospital services combined through Athena Health, with all statements coming from their headquarters in Maine. This billing is a service that is provided by our new EHR, Athena Health.

Due to the sun setting of our old EHR, Healthland, we are finding claims that were not properly submitted for payment and are doing so now. So, you may receive a bill from quite some time ago due to this clean up. Until all our EHR accounts are cleaned up and paid in full, you may get a bill from any of the above billing companies.

If you have any questions on statements you receive from MCMC please call the following:

• Hospital and Clinic Statement PRIOR to June 23rd, 2015 – Billing Company: HRG – Please call the number written on the statement
• Hospital Statements AFTER June 23rd, 2015 – Billing Company: Patient Co. – Please call 628-2424 and ask for the Billing Department
• Clinic Statements AFTER June 23rd, 2015 – Billing Company: Athena Health – Call 628-2505 and ask for the Billing Department

We appreciate your patience during this conversion and thank you for choosing us.

No you do not! The Mountrail County Medical Center in Stanley has a fully staffed Physical Therapy department that is here for any of your physical therapy needs. Our therapists provide hands-on assessment and treatment for patients of all ages with acute, postoperative, or chronic conditions involving the foot, ankle, knee, hip, back/spine, neck, shoulders, elbows, wrists and the hands. Some of the most common diagnoses that therapists see are golfer’s elbow, tennis elbow, tendonitis, plantar fasciitis, bursitis, sciatica, sprains, strains, rotator cuff injuries, low back pain and neck pain and or spasms. Treatment is also available for on the job injuries or neurological conditions such as strokes, Multiple Sclerosis, Parkinson’s, traumatic brain injury and spinal cord injury.

The Physical Therapy department at MCMC can also offer aquatic therapy at the Ina Mae Rude Aquatic Center. The Center features a state of the art warm water therapeutic indoor pool. Depending on your needs, aquatic therapy may be an option to help speed recovery. The warm therapeutic pool helps to decrease spasm and pain and promote muscle relaxation. A ramp and waterproof wheelchairs make it accessible to all who would benefit from aquatic therapy. It also serves as an environment to perform exercises with less joint compression and irritation to improve success with exercise and rehabilitation programs.

The hospital at the Mountrail County Medical Center can accommodate your recovery needs, right here close to home, from any sort of surgery or illness with our skilled and self pay swing beds. The physcial therapists come to the room to work with swing bed patients to improve their strength and mobility after a fracture, injury or surgery.

Hours for the Physical Therapy Department are Monday through Friday from 8:00 AM to 4:30 PM. To schedule an appointment please call 628-2424,extension 146. All major insurances are accepted. Generally a doctor’s referral must be in place before your first visit. However, some insurance plans do not require a physician’s order.

We thank you for your continued support. Nobody takes care of you like your own.

The Mountrail County Medical Center has currently upgraded their website thanks to a donation from the T.H. Reiarson trust. Our new website (www.stanleyhealth.org) features all the services the facility currently can do for you along with Board and Staff information, hours, career opportunities, new patient paperwork and other resources you may need.

One of the features under the”Patients, Families and Visitors” tab is the Patient Web Portal. This patient portal allows you to communicate with MCMC easily and safely, according to your schedule. Once setup, this portal allows you to view and request appointments, request and refill prescriptions, retrieve test results, view your billing statements and balances, make secure credit card payments and communicate with your doctor by sending secure messages over the portal.

Upon registering for your visit at the T.H. Reiarson Rural Health Clinic, you will receive an email invitation to register for the portal. You may follow the steps within in the email, even on your Smartphone while you wait for your appointment, or register on your personal computer when you get home. Once you have your secure, personal password, you can log into the online patient portal via our website 24 hours a day, 7 days a week from the comfort and privacy of your home or office. Please register shortly after your appointment, if possible, to ensure all your test results get downloaded properly. If no portal is setup once the reports are completed, the reports will not automatically go into the portal once you have setup your account.

Informative brochures are available at the front desk of the clinic. These brochures tell you exactly what the portal can do for you and where to log-in for future use. Please note that only one person can utilize an email address for a patient portal. If you want to register your entire family under the same email address, please contact the clinic at 628-2505 for an all family access. We thank you for your continued support and please remember, nobody takes care of you like your own.