GRMC Board of Managers extends kudos to hospital staff for top awards, new projects plus recruitment during pandemic year

Seguin, TX, USA / Seguin Today

Cindy Aguirre

(Seguin) — Earlier this week, the GRMC Board of Managers applauded the individual contributions of hospital employees throughout this COVID-19 pandemic.                    
 
Today, those same leaders are applauding the hospital for honors and projects that often times flew under the radar while most of were in quarantine.
 
Dr. James Lee, board chairman for Guadalupe Regional Medical Center, says even under the demands of treating COVID-19 patients, the hospital managed to pick up some national recognition for its operation.
 
“Still during the pandemic, the hospital was honored by Modern Healthcare as one of the Top 25 medical health facilities in the nation. It’s a pretty good honor. That was employees evaluating the hospital. Fay Bennett (vice president of employee services) put in a lot of work on that also. Last year, we were No. 52. They only tell you the Top 100 and so, we were No. 25 out of 4,800 hospitals or health related facilities in the nation. About 1,000 competed for this honor,” said Dr. Lee.

Being named one of the top 25 healthcare facilities in the nation by Modern Healthcare, however, was not the only recognition for the GRMC. Dr. Lee says the hospital managed to pull in other notable accomplishments.
 
“The Women’s Choice Award placed GRMC in the Top four percent in the nation for patient safety. Also, Leap Frog, another health rating organism gave GRMC an A rating. That’s the highest you can get, of course, for safety. That means you had safe surgical practices, low complications, low infections. Our hospital was recognized for outstanding patient experience and that’s the patient’s evaluating the hospital after they’ve been in the hospital. This is the third year in a row that we have had outstanding patient experience. They put us in the Top 10 percent of all the hospitals. Five Star Awards, that’s the highest you can get. That varies from year to year. Some areas are rated good, excellent on some years. This year, we had our highest rating in vaginal deliveries but that has been five years in a row. Colon rectal surgery, heart failure, and hysterectomies, those all received Five Star this year,” said Dr. Lee. 

Dr. Lee says all the while, the hospital still managed to continue these last few months by handling a few new projects and acquisitions.
 
“We will be opening a new Women’s Center which will have 3D mammography. We are doing an upgrade on the laboratory — increasing space, brand new equipment, put the sample in one end and it comes out the other end with all the results. It’s very very up-to-date as far as our lab is concerned. We opened up an urgent care in Clear Springs. Dr. (Brett) Ernest is the one whose is running that. He’s a primary care physician. It also became the COVID testing site. I’m not sure how many COVID tests they did but they did quite a number of COVID-tests,” said Dr. Lee.

Dr. Lee says to top it off, the hospital was also able to welcome a new piece of equipment designed to improve the quality of care, and to help save lives.
 
“We added another surgical robot this year to the hospital. Now, we have two. They are not cheap. They are $2.5 million. We have 68 new Striker beds. Striker is a very well known related company. So that will be brand new beds on medical and surgical floor, some in OB. We will have a new 3D x-ray. We are one of the only hospitals in the area — I don’t think even anybody in San Antonio has this technology so that’s going to be put in the next few months. That’s for radiology,” said Dr. Lee. 

Dr. Lee says this work and these accomplishments by the hospital are not going unnoticed especially when it comes to attracting new physicians to its medical community.

“Recruiting still goes on at our hospital. We’ve added  Dr. (John) White who is a urologist. Dr. Andrew Cichowski who is a neurologist and outstanding. Dr. Ernest as I mentioned a primary care physician at the urgent care center in Clear Springs. We have an endocrinologist that is coming I believe later in the year or next year,” said Dr. Lee.

Dr. Lee was on hand to celebrate the work of GRMC at this week’s meeting of the Guadalupe County Commissioners Court. The presentation was GRMC’s public recognition of its entire medical team.

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