Vicki Lewis, FACHE: Welcome to Discussions With a
Doc. This is a healthcare podcast brought to you by Coffee Regional Medical
Center in Douglas, Georgia, where our mission is to provide exceptional care
and wellness close to home. Join us as we learn more about rural healthcare in
South Georgia.

Caitlin Whyte: In today's episode, we're excited to
be joined by the president and CEO of Coffee Regional Medical Center, Mrs.
Vicki Lewis. Vicki is here to offer us some background on Coffee Regional
Medical Center, its team of physicians and the unique challenges rural
healthcare systems face. Mrs. Lewis, it's so great to have you here with us
today.

Vicki Lewis, FACHE: Thank you.

Caitlin Whyte: And Mrs. Lewis, please tell us a bit
to start about Coffee Regional Medical Center.

Vicki Lewis, FACHE: I'm happy to do that. Coffee
Regional Medical Center or CRMC is a 98-bed acute care hospital in Douglas,
Georgia. And we are in rural South Eastern Georgia. As subsidiary of Coffee
regional is our physician practices, CRH physician practices, where we employ
approximately 30 physicians. This includes everything from family medicine to
interventional cardiologists. Our primary service lines include bariatrics,
cardiology, oncology, orthopedics, and women's health. We have an outstanding
team of physicians who offer genuine care and compassionate to every patient
while providing lifesaving expertise in our community every day. For almost 70
years, we've been an essential part of this community. And as one of the
largest employers in our community, we're also a significant contributor to
Douglas, Georgia's economic health.

Caitlin Whyte: Well, I'd love to know more about the
area you serve. Tell us about Coffee County.

Vicki Lewis, FACHE: Coffee County has a population of
about 45,000. Douglas is the county seat and is home to about a quarter of the
county's population. We are a rural area and we differ from urban areas in that
the vast majority of our population is actually outside the city limits. And
this is also the reason that we put such an emphasis on our emergency medical
services. Our ambulance service, our EMS was recently voted number one in the
state of Georgia, which we are extremely proud of.

Our community is progressive and growing every year. Thanks
to our diverse industry. Coffee County is home to many different industries,
including everything from greenhouses to twisted pair cabling, wire
manufacturers, chemical production, poultry processing, and lots of
agriculture, including the largest peanut shelling plant in the world. We're very
happy to be home to a lot of manufacturing businesses as well. And those
include aviation components, mobile homes and cargo trailers.

Our industry workforce is composed of individuals from not
only Coffee County, but many of the surrounding counties. And as a result of
this, many individuals seek healthcare in our community. We like to say that
our noon census in Coffee County is much higher than our midnight census. And
that is because so many people come to our community to work.

Caitlin Whyte: Now today, we're focusing on some of
the problems that come up in rural healthcare systems. So tell us about some of
the challenges that your health system faces.

Vicki Lewis, FACHE: Payer mix is probably one of our
biggest challenges as a nonprofit, Medicare and Medicaid-approved hospital. We
care for anyone who needs it, who visits us for care, regardless of their
ability to pay. And our payer mix is unfortunately heavily weighted with either
uninsured or under-insured individuals and some of these folks have difficulty
paying for healthcare services.

But also like hospitals nationwide, we do have some
challenges with staffing. We are seeing a shortage of registered nurses and
that has been difficult for us. And it's difficult in part because we believe
we have the very best nurses in the world, but this shortage is extremely hard
and demanding on our staff. COVID has of course exacerbated this problem and it
has forced us to use temporary help. We've been very fortunate to have the
support of the state of Georgia in bringing temporary health in. But again, we
are very much trying to meet these challenges by adding caregivers to our team
and our hospital things.

Another challenge that we constantly face is the recruitment
of physicians. We're extremely blessed to have a fantastic medical staff at
Coffee Regional. We do constantly work on adding to those numbers and also to
bring in specialty services to meet the demand of our community. We have a
bring-it-home strategy for our physician recruitment. And that is we try to
identify young men and women in our community who grew up here and are either
intending to go off to medical school or who do go off to medical school, and
then we try to recruit them back. Those are the physicians that mesh well with
our community. And it's very important to us that we bring in physicians who
understand the community and want to stay here.

Caitlin Whyte: I love that, investing in doctors who
are homegrown. That's such a good idea. And I know Coffee Regional is a
nonprofit hospital. What exactly does that mean?

Vicki Lewis, FACHE: That means that we are a
tax-exempt and not-for-profit facility. And we are mission-driven and our
mission is to care for everyone in our community who needs care. Now, that
doesn't mean that we don't have a bottom line, but that does mean that we can
take advantage of the purchase of products without paying taxes on them. That
helps us immensely. The acquisition of supplies to care for our patients is
also challenging. Especially in COVID, our supply chain has been hamstrung. So
without that tax-exempt status, we really would have difficulty in purchasing
products. So we hold very close to our mission. It's something that is part of
what we do each and every day at the hospital

Caitlin Whyte: And wrapping up here, what does the
future look like for Coffee Regional Medical Center?

Vicki Lewis, FACHE: I love to talk about the future
for Coffee Regional. The future is bright for us. We have a strategic plan that
we're proud of and that we believe is going to help us meet the needs of our
community well into the future. We have growth plans around our service lines
that I mentioned before, beriatrics, cardiology, orthopedics, oncology, and
women's health. We are trying not only to provide the very best care, but we
have an improvement strategy for our physical plant and our patient care areas
in particular. We just completed a second cath lab and a renovation of our
women's health unit. And we are in the midst of completing a day surgery and
endoscopy renovation. That is going to be very convenient for patients. And in
the not too distant future, we will also be adding intensive care beds to our
space here.

So it's important to us in the future to be the very best
place for patients to receive their care and also the very best place for our
staff to work. And we know that together we can achieve these goals. And so
we're looking positively and with smiles on our faces into the future.

Caitlin Whyte: Wonderful. Well, it sounds like an
exciting time. Vicki, is there anything else you'd like us to know about Coffee
Regional Medical Center?

Vicki Lewis, FACHE: You know, again, I just think we
are proud and honored to serve our community as the sole community provider
hospital. We take very seriously our responsibility in doing that. And again,
our hearts are filled with compassion and care, and we try to show that every
day in caring for our patients.

We've decided to create this podcast to educate our
community and enlighten those throughout our great nation about rural
healthcare. We hope you subscribe and enjoy Discussions With The Doc. Thank you
for listening to this podcast sponsored by Coffee Regional Medical Center,
where our purpose is to serve, to heal, to save.

Caitlin Whyte: Well, it was just a joy to speak with
you today. Thank you so much for joining us. That was the president and CEO of
Coffee Regional Medical Center, Mrs. Vicki Lewis. If you've enjoyed this
podcast, be sure to subscribe. And for more information on this podcast and
Mrs. Lewis, check out the episode notes or visit us online at
coffeeregional.org/podcasts.

This concludes today's episode of Discussions With The Doc.
We invite you to download, subscribe, rate, and review our podcast on Apple
Podcast, Google Podcast, and Spotify. For more episodes and information on our
providers and services. Visit us online at coffeeregional.org.

This program aims to enhance your health and wellness
knowledge by fulfilling the vision of Coffee Regional Medical Center: healthy
lifestyles, better lives.

None of the information provided in this episode should
serve as a diagnosis or approval of the treatment for any ailment. The
information and opinions provided in this podcast do not create any type of
doctor-patient relationship.

By listening to this podcast, you agree not to use this
podcast as medical advice to treat any medical condition in either yourself or
others, including but not limited to patients that you are treating. Consult
with your own physician for any medical issues that you may be having.

The opinions of the guests do not necessarily represent the
opinion of Coffee Regional Medical Center.