Transcription:
New Changes for Norton County Hospital Rehabilitation

Caitlin Whyte: Norton County Hospital's Rehabilitation Program is making a move to a new location and is also offering virtual appointments. The department manager is Kellen Jacobs, and he is here to explain what these changes mean for patients

From the planes of rural Northwest Kansas to you, this is Health in the Heartland presented by Norton County Hospital, where medical experts aim to empower health at any stage of life. I'm your host, Caitlin Whyte. Well, Kellen, first, let's talk about the move. Where will your department be moving?

Kellen Jacobs, DPT: Yeah. So we're super excited about the upcoming move that we have. We're going to be moving to what Norton residents would remember as the old doctor's clinic. The physical address is 711 North Norton, but it's just basically catty-corner from the hospital campus as it is right now. It's where Colby Community College Nursing Program has their program. And we will just kind of share that building with that group. And super excited about the move. It's going to give us the opportunity to offer more to our patients. And so, yeah, 711 North Norton will be the physical address. We'll have new signage that's put up that kind of alerts everybody where we're at, and that'll be coming up in the next few weeks.

Caitlin Whyte: Gotcha. Well, that was my next question. When are you guys heading over to the new location?

Kellen Jacobs, DPT: Yeah. The next couple weeks are going to be very busy for us. We have lots of things going on in our whole department. We have lots of education things that are going on as far as getting a new electronic health record. We're going to be moving physical locations. And so the first day that we're actually going to be seeing patients will be September 19th. So we have to move every piece of equipment and everything that we need to move over to that building so that we're ready to go September 19th.

Caitlin Whyte: Well, that is coming up soon. A lot is going on like you said. So what are some changes for patients regarding the move? What should we be, you know, keeping an eye on?

Kellen Jacobs, DPT: Yeah, that's a great question. Really just show up. So we're going to still offer the same great service to all of our patients that we always have. The only difference is just the physical location. So it's actually going to be a better location for most of our patients, because they can basically pull right up to the door. So if they pull up to the north doors, they can just walk right inside the building. Same reception staff, you'll have the same waiting room, but a new facility. So in terms of what changes for patients, really nothing, just the physical location.

Caitlin Whyte: Okay. Beautiful. So what are some benefits of having this new location? You said it was going to be bigger, better. Tell us about the new changes.

Kellen Jacobs, DPT: Yeah, it gives us an opportunity to kind of expand on what we already do really, really well. So we have great staff, wonderful therapists who treat patients really, really well. Everybody gets better. We've always had a very high patient satisfaction survey results. So we do have a great staff and to be able to highlight our staff and really supplement what they already do really, really well. We will have an expanded gym space, which allows us to kind of progress patients a little further even than what we would normally be able to do in our current location. So we have added a few little pieces of equipment here and there to be able to really rehab patients a lot better and get them back to more full participation.

Sometimes in therapy, we get people just good enough to get back to their kind of normal routine. And with this facility, we'll be able to get them, you know, really back to a hundred percent athletic performance if they're an athlete or back to full on the job work, if that's what their goals are. So with kind of the expanded space and a little bit more equipment, we'll better be able to serve our patient population. And like I said, take what we do really well already and just kind of grow that a little bit more.

Caitlin Whyte: Well, it sounds exciting. Let's talk about the services you offer. What do you offer now? And then what, if any, new services are going to be at the new location?

Kellen Jacobs, DPT: Yeah. So we offer everything that we've always traditionally offered. So we're primarily an outpatient therapy-based location. So we offer physical therapy, occupational therapy and speech therapy on a outpatient basis. We do cover inpatients at the hospital. And so all of that is still going to continue. So we'll still continue to see all of our inpatients. We'll just have therapists run across the street, treat our patients, and then head back over and then see their outpatients. So all of our services are going to continue. We offer everything and anything under the sun in terms of physical therapy, occupational therapy and speech therapy. So in a rural health clinic, you kind of have to be a jack of all trades and all of our therapists definitely are. So we offer, you know, physical therapy and I'm going to speak on that primarily, because that's my role, my job from basically birth to, you know, almost end of life. So we see every diagnosis, every possible condition that somebody might have. We are primarily kind of manual therapy-based and therapeutic exercise instruction-based therapists. Most of us all kind of fall in that same category. So with this new location, we'll be able to just, like I said in the previous question, kind of expand on what we already do really, really well.

One new service line that we are kind of bringing on is kind of the adjunct of having a virtual component to our physical therapy services. So we will be able to work in several different ways to offer virtual services to patients, should the need ever arise for lots of different reasons, which we can talk about in a little bit. We still offer women's health services. We offer any postsurgical services that anybody needs, neuro rehab after a stroke or a brain injury, any sports injury, basically you name it. We get the opportunity to try to treat it.

Caitlin Whyte: Well, let's focus on that virtual physical therapy for a second. I'm super interested in this. Why might a patient choose a virtual appointment over an in-person one?

Kellen Jacobs, DPT: Right. So we have lots of opportunities for lots of different reasons. Somebody might choose virtual over, you know, kind of the traditional face-to-face appointment. So really, especially with the issues that brought about with COVID, a lot of people still were having pain or still having injuries or still having surgeries and they needed to do some therapy. However, for different reasons, sometimes the therapist might not be available. The patient might now feel really comfortable going into a hospital environment to receive therapy or, you know, maybe they're just in a rural area like we serve, it's a really difficult task to get into a clinic, you know, physically get from place to place. You know, sometimes you're reliant on a caregiver's schedule when they can drive you to your appointments if you can't drive or, you know, lots of different reasons. So, you know, that's one of the reasons we wanted to expand that service line and offer that to our patients because we do cover a pretty big regional area. And, you know, it can work potentially really well in a hybrid model where maybe somebody comes into our clinic, you know, one time, but then they do a few virtual appointments before their next face to face appointment. That can save a caregiver having to take off work and drive them to all their appointments a couple times a week, but it still gives the patient what they need in the fact that they need, or they can still have a couple appointments per week.

So that's one issue that I could see us being very beneficial to a lot of our patient population on if there is another COVID scare or if the flu has an outbreak or something like that. And people might have some comorbidities and they just don't want to risk getting out into a place where a lot of people go, a lot of people come to the hospital and a lot of people that come to the hospital are coming here for some reason. And so if that's a concern, we can still offer the same great therapy services, just do it in a virtual platform. That's going to be a tremendous help for people, you know. And then, the same thing goes, is it's just the convenience. So with this platform, we can offer therapy services to somebody basically whenever it works for their schedule. So if they are a stay-at-home mom, you're on call 24/7, so you just never have time off. So, you know, working around that schedule is going to be a huge benefit to a lot of our patients. They can still get in a little bit of therapy. They can still talk to a very highly skilled, licensed therapist who can help them navigate whatever their issues that they're having. And they can just do it from the comfort of their own home. So that's going to be a tremendous benefit to a lot of our patients who either can't travel, maybe don't want to travel, don't have the opportunity or the time, and they can still get in all their therapy services.

Caitlin Whyte: Absolutely. Well, if that sounds, you know, attractive to someone, how might a patient schedule a virtual appointment?

Kellen Jacobs, DPT: Right. So basically, it's identical to how you would schedule an in-person visit. So you can just call our clinic like they normally would and our reception staff. We can help navigate that process. So if the patient says that they're interested in doing some virtual sessions, our receptionist will get them in touch with our patient liaison. So we use a company called Joint Recovery Services to help provide all of our therapy, because they have a specific platform that we use. And so the patient liaison will contact that patient prior to their appointment and make sure that they have all the necessary things lined up before that first visit so that, you know, their technology is acceptable and they've kind of run them through a couple trials. That way, that first day, that very first appointment visit, everything goes nice and smoothly. So for the patient, really nothing changes. They just call and make an appointment like they normally would with our reception staff. Then from there, there's one kind of go-between person that can help kind of iron out any issues that might happen before they even become an issue before that first appointment.

Caitlin Whyte: Gotcha. Well, can you tell us more about how virtual PT might blend in with in-person PT? Can you kind of go back and forth between different types of appointments?

Kellen Jacobs, DPT: Yeah, absolutely. A lot of patients who start virtually just enjoy it so much that they just continue to do the virtual session. That is absolutely a possibility. We can certainly help a patient with that. However, we also offer kind of the blend. So if a patient wants to see a therapist in-person, but then maybe for whatever reason, they can't attend as frequently as they would like to or as frequently as the doctor would prescribe or the therapist would recommend, we can blend some virtual sessions in there too. So they can continue to get really great quality care with the same therapist that they would typically see in the clinic. They would just do it, you know, through their phone or their laptop.

So I have a patient right now who I saw for an in-person face-to-face visit. However, typically, three out of the four weeks of the month or five weeks of the month, she works out of town. So scheduling visits and repeat visits for that particular patient is very difficult. So, you know, you don't want to have therapy once a month necessarily if you're in pain and you're having some issues. And so, this is a great way that we can help kind of bridge that gap. So whenever this patient is back in the location, well, great. We'll do a face-to-face visit. And, you know, we'll do some different things that we can do in-person that maybe we're limited on virtually, some hands-on sort of things, but everything else we can do virtually. So it really doesn't change our treatment session very much at all, doing it in-person versus through some sort of smart device. But that's a great option for that patient. She can still get therapy from a therapist that she's already seen and hopefully has built some trust with, and we just continue that, you know, whatever part of the country she happens to be in.

Caitlin Whyte: Absolutely. Well, wrapping up here, doctor, my last question on a virtual PT. Is the billing any different?

Kellen Jacobs, DPT: Yeah, really nothing changes. So we take care of all that stuff. We handle all that stuff. But there's a little bit of a different code that we have to enter. But otherwise, everything's pretty much the same. So nothing has really changed. And that's one thing where for all the negative and bad nasty things that we talk about with COVID, it has allowed us to expand some technology and do some things kind of forced us to think outside the box a little bit, which hopefully we're going to learn some lessons from and be better because of it. And I think this is one of those things, especially because in this rural market, we do cover such a wide area. We have people that'll travel 30 to 45 miles one way just to receive therapy. Well, that gets kind of expensive, especially if gas prices are kind of high or it's difficult to find somebody to drive you. So virtually, everything is the same. We just can do it from the comfort of your own home.

Caitlin Whyte: Well, Kellen, we've covered a lot here today, but is there anything else you would like to add?

Kellen Jacobs, DPT: We're we're very excited about our move. It's going to be a lot of work for us in the short-term. So, you know, hopefully, everybody has enough patience and grace with us. We are trying to get patients in as quick as we can. We're going to have a little bit better capabilities, both with staffing and location and equipment and all that stuff at our next location, which is half a block away, so it's not even very far. The biggest thing I can say is just I'm super excited for our move. Our staff is really great, and this will only allow them to treat patients even better than what we have in the past.

Caitlin Whyte: Well, thank you so much, Kellen, for telling us about these big moves. I'm so excited to watch the future of your rehabilitation department and good luck with the move. You can learn more about Norton County Hospital and all of its departments and services online at www.ntcohosp.com. And thanks for listening to Health in the Heartland. I'm Caitlin Whyte. Stay well.