Franciscan Rensselaer

On Thursday afternoon Franciscan Rensselaer hosted a media day and invited me. Others who attended were Nick from the Rensselaer Republican, Russ from the local radio stations, and a young woman from several Valparaiso radio stations.

The Jasper County Hospital opened on January 19, 1917 with 16 beds. It was located east southeast of the court house where today the County has a parking lot. The building at the current location was opened in January of 1965 and in 1975 an addition increased its capacity to 86 beds. Franciscan Alliance took over the operation of the hospital in September 2015.

Franciscan Rensselaer is a Critical Access Hospital and what that means is explained here. The hospital has an emergency room with a doctor present around the clock. Many of the admissions to the hospital are through the emergency room, though a local doctor can admit directly if he or she has a patient that needs to be in the hospital. However, the local doctors do not care for their patients once they are in the hospital. Instead the hospital has specialized doctors called hospitalists. (See here for more information about hospitalists.) As a result, local doctors no longer do hospital rounds, making their schedules less strenuous. This change is part of a national trend. The hospital also provides the swing-bed program; see here for what that means.

Almost all the doctors who work out of the hospital travel to Rensselaer a day or two a week. This allows the hospital to offer many specialized services that would otherwise not be available if it relied on only local doctors. The vast majority of the patients who visit the hospital do not stay overnight. Most procedures are for outpatients or in the emergency room. On average there are only about 6 patients in the hospital, but it fluctuates and occasionally gets as high as 16 or 17, which is about the maximum that the nursing staff can handle. (This does not include the people in Alternacare.) Patients needing more care than can be provided locally are transferred, usually to Lafayette, but if they need more than Lafayette can handle, they usually go to Indianapolis.

In October of 2016 Franciscan Alliance acquired what was previously Louck Family Medicine. They have worked hard to increase the number of physicians and nurse practitioners working from this office. They said that there are currently 5½ doctors or nurse practitioners working from this office, including a ob-gyn who is there one day a week and an new, young MD who arrived in August. Franciscan Alliance also staffs health facilities in Brook and Wheatfield as well as the Working Well office near the hospital.

The hospital is spending $350,000 this year on improvements or repairs, including replacing a roof from 1983. It has upgraded the computer systems to match that of the other Franciscan hospitals (and much of the rest of the hospital world). It can use the Internet to provide access to off-site specialists and also to provide translation services if a patient arrives who speaks no English. (It was useful recently for a person from the country of Georgia who arrived because of an accident on I-65.) Coming soon is advance wound care, which is treatment for wounds that do not heal well, most often a problem for people with diabetes.

The hospital takes seriously its patient satisfaction scores and has a 3 star rating, which is a number assigned by Medicare. (See here and here.) The website for Franciscan Rensselaer is here.

I do not have any pictures from the hospital but do have one of construction of the shelter at the dog park. The labor is donated by Shanley Construction and the lumber by Kem's Hardware. (For more pictures, here.)

I had not heard anything about this new business in Jasper County. (See here.) It has a plant that each day turns 945 tons of cow manure into fuel. It is connected to NIPSCOs natural gas pipeline. Some info on the company is here.