The Boundary Hospital got a thumbs up recently from the head of Interior Health (IH).
Interior Health CEO and president Dr. Robert Halpenny, as well as board chair Norman Embree, were at the Grand Forks hospital on July 16 as part of a tour of hospitals and health centres in the area.
“On a yearly basis the board chair and I try and visit all our communities throughout Interior Health,” said Halpenny. “The purpose of our visits is to understand the geography, the topography that our rural health authority patients are exposed to. We visit medical staff at each site, we visit our staff at each site, we spend some time with local politicians.”
They also meet with local health auxiliaries and foundations, said Halpenny.
“We also do tours to make sure we understand the requirements in an individual site,” he said. “It gives us the opportunity to hear from our staff what their issues are. As a CEO of a $1.9-billion organization it’s important that I know what’s going on.”
Halpenny says Grand Forks and area residents are fortunate to have the medical resources that they do.
“Our staff and the medical staff are very cohesive; they work as a team,” he said. “I think some of that comes back to the team aspect of this community. The physicians are involved with teaching medical students and residents—that raises the quality. The services that are provided such as a cancer diagnosis, they can get the treatment here in many cases. It’s a very high functioning site and I’m very proud of it.”
New acute services health services administrator
Halpenny also announced that a replacement has been found for Ingrid Hampf, who has retired as acute services administrator after 30 years with IH.
Brigitte McDonough will be starting as health services administrator – acute services for Kootenay Boundary starting on Aug. 18.
McDonough has been a registered nurse with 14 years of leadership experience working in large, integrated healthcare systems, most recently with Alberta Health Services. She will be living in Nelson.
Seniors
Halpenny said the seniors in the Grand Forks area are well taken care of by the health system.
“One of the fortunate things about a community this size is because you have a team approach, folks that are in the community are identified when they a problem or an issue,” he said. “Very often in the larger centres (seniors) fall through the cracks and end up in emergency. Here, because everything is on one site—you have home and community care, you have physicians—you have all the services that can identify those people and offer support for them. People really look after each other in these communities. We have to recognize that too.”