Healthcare Advisory Board Update

By the PR County Healthcare Advisory Board

The last couple of months have been very interesting to say the least. What ever your opinion on it, COVID-19 has made an impact on our lives. The Healthcare Advisory Board took some time off to help with the social distancing, but we are now back to work.

There are a few things we want to make sure that everyone understands. We are a Healthcare Advisory Board to the commissioners. We do not have any decision-making capability and we do not control any funding. We gather information, correlate that information and then advise the commissioners to the best course of action in planning the future of the healthcare scene in Powder River County. We are different than the Board of Health that is mandated by Montana Statute. There are a few of us on the Board that are county employees and/or healthcare employees. We do not create policy or have any input in payroll, we strictly advise the commissioners on the future.

The board meets every two weeks in order to put out the best possible recommendations. A massive amount of time has been spent on learning in meetings thus far. Mostly, our meetings to date have been learning how to work and navigate inside the medical field. The medical field has a tempo and language all its’ own and until you start to figure it out, “daunting” is an understatement. We have studied other Montana counties Community Health Needs Assessments, their Critical Access Hospital plans, policies and operations. We have met with a company representative to learn about architecture and are currently talking to individuals at the state level about getting a Community Health Needs Assessment done here in Powder River County. This Assessment will help to lay a foundation for any and all decisions made about healthcare in the county for the next 4 or 5 years. We have started exploring the idea of creating a hospital district, as well as how to make the ambulance service more robust as we move forward. There has been lots of talk about a Critical Access Hospital here in Broadus, but we feel that we have many steps to go before we can make any recommendations on that subject.

Remember, we are just exploring options. We would like to have some public comment and invite anyone interested in what we are doing to our meetings every other Tuesday at noon. We do move the meetings around a little in order to take advantage of certain facilities for phone/webcalls, scheduling conflicts, or even just the size of the meeting. The Clerk and Recorder’s office has that meeting place posted at least 48 hours in advance. Please come visit with us and see what we are doing! If you have any questions, please call Board Chairman Dave Gardner at 784-6181.