CEO Report from September 25, 2024 Board Meeting

The following is an outline of comments from the CEO at the recent Redwood Coast Medical Services (RCMS) Board Meeting.
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Community Outreach

• This Friday, Sept 27, KGUA will air an interview with me that was recorded earlier this month on the podcast ‘This Sea Ranch Live interview’. KGUA will air it at 9 am and 1 pm.  During this interview, I discussed the reasons, rationale, and status of the proposed annex expansion along with other RCMS-related topics.

 
Organizational/Operational update

• RCMS Heliport – we are in the process of repainting the helipad to address chipped and faded paints. It is done in phases so that the heliport is always operational, for the right reasons. We will complete the work over the next couple of weeks. In another helipad-related activity, CALTRAN air transportation authority is visiting us this coming Monday for compliance inspection. We expect it to be fairly routine.
• There is a health fair taking place at the Point Arena High School on Oct 2nd.  RCMS will participate there with two booths – one focusing on dental care, and the other one on medical care. We also continue to work with the school district and Action Network on Teen Clinics being held in our Point Arena Medical facility to provide sensitive services to teenagers.  
• We are participating in a Mass Casualty Incident (MCI) simulation on November 16th. All local emergency care-providing entities will participate. It will simulate a school bus overturning at Timber Cove. The simulation will end with trauma patients being transferred to the RCMS Gualala facility.
• We now have a security camera in our main building's upper parking lot. We had a situation there recently that could have been helped if we had the camera in place. At any rate, we have surveillance cameras in all our clinical facilities now.
• This month we got the EJC parking lot repaired and resurfaced. While we are having some financial difficulties, some of this basic infrastructure work must go on. We also had EJC building outside painted a few weeks back.
• As I mentioned last month – our compute and communication infrastructure and associated performance of our IT systems have been an issue for us for a long time. It continues to adversely impact our operation. As such, have decided to change our IT vendor and the transition process has started.
• We have signed up with an organization called Confirmed. They provide eConsult to our primary care providers. Our providers can consult with about 300 clinical specialists covering over 70 different specialty areas. From allergy to cardiology to neurology to oncology and many others. This service is covered by MediCal for MediCal members – but we are providing this to all our patients at our own cost because Medicare and private insurance do not cover this service. For example -- a typical scenario could be that one of our providers finds an abnormal blood test results in one of our patients. The provider can consult a hematologist and can get guidance on what that abnormality means or how to treat it.

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