Selected Podcast
Welcoming the Future with Open Arms
It’s been a challenging few years for many people. Between the pandemic and the economy, many of us have experienced higher levels of exhaustion, disappointment, and loss. As an organization, The Outer Banks Hospital and Medical has had to navigate some rough seas too but despite that, we have so much to be grateful about and to celebrate.
Featured Speaker:
Amy Montgomery, FACHE
Amy Montgomery holds a Bachelor’s Degree in Nutrition and Dietetics and a Master’s Degree in Health Promotion from East Carolina University. Formerly the hospital’s director of community outreach, Montgomery accepted the senior administrator of operations role in 2015. Montgomery is a fellow of the American College of Healthcare Executives. She is an established leader in our community. As the health education supervisor for the Dare County Department of Public Health, Montgomery started the Miles of Smiles Mobile Dental Unit and the Peer Power Program. She also led the first Community Health Assessment for Dare County. She was a key member of the committee that started the Outer Banks Marathon and Outer Banks Sporting Events, as part of her seven-year tenure as the executive director of the Dare Education Foundation. She serves on the Boards of Directors for Children and Youth Partnership for Dare County, Outer Banks Relief Foundation and Outer Banks Sporting Events. Transcription:
Welcoming the Future with Open Arms
Wendy Kelly: Welcome to Outer Banks's Health, the official podcast series of the Outer Banks Hospital and Medical Group, where we discuss health topics of interest to the community. I'm your co-host, Wendy Kelly. And because today is the last podcast of 2022, we thought it would be interesting to take a look at some of the highlights and the challenges from this past year, as well as speak to our organization's ability to continue to evolve and grow. But first, I'm thrilled to introduce our new podcast cohost, Jennifer Schwartzenberg. Hey, Jen. Welcome. Are you ready for this?
Jen Schwartzenberg: Hi, Wendy. How are you? It's great to be here.
Wendy Kelly: Great. I'm glad you're here.
Jen Schwartzenberg: Thank you. I'm super excited to be a new addition to our Outer Banks Health Podcast series. I know that we have some really exciting topics that we've already started brainstorming for 2023. And we are joined by someone else today. Amy Montgomery is our Senior Administrator of Operations for the Outer Banks Hospital. Welcome, Amy. Hello.
Amy Montgomery: Hi Jen. How are you guys? Hi Jen. Hi, Wendy.
Wendy Kelly: Hi, Amy. What have things been like for you, Amy, over the past couple of years? And how have we endured and pressed through some of the challenges that we've encountered?
Amy Montgomery: Yeah. Well, I love how Jennifer talked about our outreach efforts and hiring someone new and the cancer center and all those great things. But I would be remiss not to talk about some of the challenges we've been through, especially with COVID, right? I know everybody wants to forget about it and move on, but it really has impacted us here at the Outer Banks Hospital. But the real story here is we've been through the impact and we thrived through it, and we are really on a great path forward, innovating, and really excited to share some great things with you today.
Wendy Kelly: One of the things that I think about when you mentioned COVID is just how amazing our team members are and how they push through. So many resources were retrenched, human resources. And folks just figured out how to do their job no matter what. And I think there's just a true love and passion for this community.
Amy Montgomery: I couldn't agree more. I mean, I think the community as a whole, the Outer Banks, we are a people who come together to serve our community and to serve, you know, our residents, our visitors, just with a smile and hospitality. And we just really go out of our way to provide just a great experience, whether you're a visitor or a patient at the hospital. And your comments about how we really thrived through COVID really make me think about the day a couple of years ago. It was in March of 2020 when our director of cancer services at the time called me and said, "Amy, everything is shutting down, but we can't shut down cancer services. We have to continue to provide chemotherapy and radiation therapy to our cancer patients." This is like life-saving treatment and we can't miss a beat. And I just looked at her and I said, "You're right." And we kept going and we figured out how to distance patients, how to screen them before they came in, how to make sure everything was cleaned and sanitized, how to wear masks. And our cancer services team didn't miss a beat. We continued to provide in-person care every single day through the entire pandemic.
Wendy Kelly: We really did.
Jen Schwartzenberg: Well, in community outreach, it was a little different, thinking back about the last couple years, right around that same time that Amy mentioned back in March of 2020. We had just come off the most successful Outer Ranks Hospital Gala, raising about $175,000 for the cancer center. And we thought we were going to roll right into our capital campaign to help raise the funds to build that center. But then, COVID hit and that was not an ideal time to obviously meet with our donors. There was so much uncertainty during that time and we just really wanted to be respectful of everything that everybody was going through. So, we really kind of took a backseat and did not start the capital campaign until about seven months later, after we had some time to kind of figure things out, maybe change our approach to our meetings with donors. And certainly, we did a ton of Zoom meetings and a few meetings outside and just tried to get creative so that we could still connect with our community and with our donors as we started to work on and think about the cancer center. So, that's something I think about and I'm just so grateful to be working on that project and now seeing the building coming out of the ground and knowing that we have had such tremendous community support with over $5.6 million raised for this project. We broke the 5.6-million mark this morning.
Wendy Kelly: That's amazing.
Amy Montgomery: That's exciting.
Wendy Kelly: It really is.
Amy Montgomery: Yeah. Jen, I remember the day you came in my office and said, "Can we start this campaign?" And I was like, "Oh, I guess so. Why not? You know, in a global pandemic, we can raise money." And even though so many donors couldn't meet in person, you made phone calls, you called on people. And I can't say enough about how you and your team and the Cancer Center campaign and the Development Council have really just pushed through everything that we've gone through and raise this money. And then, I can't say enough about our generous donors. And I've been with you on some of those fundraising calls and it is just so heartwarming and it is so exciting and invigorating to speak with donors who are giving not only their time to meet with us, but then their treasures and really pouring into the Cancer Center. And they believe in our mission and they're so thankful that we're here and that their family members or their friends have been able to receive care here. And I'm just so thankful for our donors.
Jen Schwartzenberg: I am too, Amy. I mean, to have those meetings and to have those connections with people and really share with them what this center is going to mean for our patients, having all of the cancer services under one roof, the impact it's going to make and the life-saving work that's going to continue to happen in that new building. And then, them saying, "No, thank you for letting me give to this project. I mean, it's really just an incredible opportunity and experience to be a part of this. So, hats off to those cancer services team members who tirelessly are working every day to help those patients.
Amy Montgomery: Absolutely. But it's not all been like rose-colored glasses this year either. Wendy, I know you welcomed us in to talk about 2022, the Cancer Center campaign and some of our outreach efforts. And we've had so many highlights, but we've had some challenges as well. And I can just say that access to primary care has certainly been a local challenge. It's been a national challenge and the things that happened this summer were never things that we wanted to experience in our community. And our hearts go out to any individuals impacted over the summer and still impacted really through access to healthcare. But still the real story here is we're getting through this, we have dug deep, we are committed. Our team has never skipped a beat.
Wendy Kelly: They really have. Hats off to those folks who despite how the community was reacting and they kept moving forward and said, "We've got this. We're going to be okay. It's going to be okay." And I'm just so proud of them.
Amy Montgomery: Yeah, I am too. I mean, just to think that how many challenges there are across the country and to know that now we're sitting in a position to have more access to primary care in our community. And I think we're projected by February of '23 to have enough providers in the community to be taking on a couple of thousand brand new patients. And I'm just so proud of that. And I'm just happy that we can continue to provide access because that's what our team members are all about.
Wendy Kelly: That's our mission.
Amy Montgomery: And then, healthcare is not the only industry who's suffering these labor shortages and these labor challenges. I mean, everything that happened was around just people making different decisions about where they want to work and where they want to live. And that's true in the restaurant industry. That's true in the retail industry. We've had issues with supply chain. We've had issues with all types of things because of the labor market and the labor shortages. And it's been true in healthcare as well, and the housing crisis. But still, here we sit after some challenges in 2022, and 2023 looks really bright.
Wendy Kelly: It really does. And we had some great highlights in 2022. Like, how about the fact that we became breast cancer-accredited? We're a National Breast Cancer-accredited center.
Amy Montgomery: Yeah, absolutely. Hats off to Dr. Charles Shelton. I hope anyone listening doesn't know him. But if you do know him, maybe it's because you have had a cancer diagnosis, unfortunately. But those who know him, know him and love him. And he leads, he really leads our cancer services. And about a year and a half ago, he came to myself and Beverly Jones, our Director of Cancer Services, and says, "We can get breast-accredited." And we said, "Okay, here we go." And in August, we actually became accredited by the American College of Surgeons Commission on Cancer Breast Accreditation Program. And it's not only a seal of high quality healthcare, but it also just guarantees the community that we are here to provide the best access to healthcare that we possibly can. And we'll show in some numbers that you're getting ready to publish in our annual report that we have actually reduced the mortality rate from breast cancer. We've cut it in half here in Dare County.
Wendy Kelly: It's incredible. It really is. And I do want to mention that getting that accreditation, we're the first hospital of our size in the nation to have an accredited breast cancer center and to do that when everything else was going on this year is just a testament to the dedication that our team has to this community.
Amy Montgomery: And we focus a lot on cancer care as we should. And we have so many other service lines that are thriving and innovating. And we also have our stroke accreditation, which is just amazing. And I'd like to focus on that for just a couple of minutes because we are literally saving lives for people who have stroke, and we weren't doing this five years ago. But now, we are stroke-accredited. And if someone is brought to our emergency department by ambulance and maybe they think they're having a stroke, we are able to quickly diagnose them and stabilize them and then transfer them to the appropriate level of care. And that's something that we weren't able to do just a short number of years ago. And I'm so proud of our team.
And the other thing I'll say about that is we do listen to feedback from the community. It is important that we listen and we're hearing what people are saying out there in the community about us, because it just helps us be better, right?
Wendy Kelly: Absolutely.
Amy Montgomery: And so, we always hear, we hear often that, "You know, the Outer Banks Hospital, they're just a transfer center, right? If you go there, you're just going to get transferred." And I want to say that sometimes that's right. But that's something we're also really proud of because, if you come to the Outer Banks Hospital, and let's say for example, you're having a stroke, now we have a team that is trained to make an accurate diagnose, maybe administer tPA, which is a life-saving clot-busting medication that we were not able to administer just a few short years ago and then packaging up that patient and transferring them to a higher level of care. And that is literally saving lives, saving quality of life. And I just feel so fortunate and blessed to have this accreditation, have these trained team members that live in a community that can make a high quality correct diagnosis and transfer. And so, you know what I say sometimes is, "Yeah, we might be sometimes a transfer center, but we're a damn good one. "
Wendy Kelly: We are.
Jen Schwartzenberg: I agree, and I would love to touch on that stroke accreditation for a minute. I've been lucky enough to work with the stroke committee and team that we have here at the hospital through some of our outreach efforts. We do stroke risk assessments out in the community at least four times a year, where we go out and do stroke education, provide a lunch and really let people know what are the first signs and symptoms of a stroke because it comes on so quickly. And now that we have the accreditation here and are able to administer the tPA and stabilize a patient, it's important to recognize those warning signs.
Something else that's kind of cool is we've also received a grant to go out into our five elementary schools. We're going to start in January and February and we have an assembly that we're going to be bringing to all of the fourth graders. There's 377 fourth graders across the county that are going to get a book and a magnet and some information and see some cool videos that a lot of times, that age group, they spend a lot of time with maybe elderly caregivers, babysitters, or their grandparents or parents that just educating these fourth graders is going to be the first stab at going out into that youth, into that community, that age group and sharing this information. So, I'm super excited to have our team be a part of that life-changing work as well.
Amy Montgomery: Yeah, Jen. I have a friend in Manteo who has spoken to me about the fact that the education that you guys put out there about stroke, actually she used it and witnessed a friend of hers having a stroke and called 911, got that person here quickly and saved that person's quality of life. And so, the education that you're doing, your team is doing now for even younger and younger people is going to save lives.
Wendy Kelly: Absolutely. I'm really excited about that.
Jen Schwartzenberg: Me too, me too.
Wendy Kelly: Amy, what about the future? What does the future hold for the Outer Banks Hospital and Medical Group?
Amy Montgomery: It's like what our president, Ronnie Sloan, says, "If we can do it here and we can do it well, we'll try." And so, another thing that people in the community sometimes say or the perception is that, "Well, why don't we have an ICU?" or "Why don't we do cardiac surgery?" And I think those are excellent questions. Those are really good questions because, if you don't work in the industry, you would think, "Well, why don't we have those things here?" I mean, we do fantastic cancer care. We have stroke accreditation. Why can't we have an ICU and those other things?
And so, I'd like to address that because it does get to an answer to your question, which is, what does a future hold? But first, I think it's important to say, like I said, we'll do what we can that we can do here safely. The reason we don't have an ICU, the reason we don't do cardiac surgery here and those types of things is because, if you're going to have a high level of care like that or if you're going to have a cardiac surgery, you want to go somewhere where those people are doing it all day every day, right? You want your surgeon to be doing 10 surgeries a day, not 10 a year. You want that ICU staff to be caring for a large number of patients on a regular basis. And the fact is we just don't have the volume here to sustain competency. So, we wouldn't have our teams or our providers treating enough patients regularly throughout the year to maintain their competency at those highly skilled things. And so for those reasons, we are not going to grow into those areas because we just don't have the volume. It's no different than maybe why we don't have a Chick-fil-A here or some franchises say, "You have to have 40,000 permanent residents before we'll build X business." And for us, it's not about the bottom line. Truly, it's not. It's about the competency of the people providing the care.
So to answer your question, I mean, it is true, our president, Ronnie Sloan, and the rest of our executive team, when people bring ideas to us, we really do consider it. And if we can do it safely and well, we will consider it. I mean, for example, we have a fantastic urologist here now and she's doing all kinds of innovative in-office procedures as well as things in the OR. We just have so many things that we're doing that the community has recommended over the past years of scalp cooling therapy for cancer services. I'm looking at you, Jen. I know you've benefited from that.
Jen Schwartzenberg: Yes, I did.
Amy Montgomery: Just looking at your beautiful hair. But we were the third hospital in the state of North Carolina to do scalp cooling therapy for cancer patients.
Wendy Kelly: And I just want to remind everybody, we are a critical access hospital that's 21 beds or less. We live on an island. We are remote and the fact that we have a lot and even more than some of the bigger hospitals in North Carolina is just incredible.
Amy Montgomery: Absolutely. So, I know I've talked in circles, but I am going to answer your question. So, what does the future look like? The future looks like we're expanding our laboratory right now inside the hospital. For the past year and a half, we've been under a master facility plan. And so, we have purchased some new chemistry analyzers, the equipment is so large, we're expanding the lab in part to accommodate these larger analyzers, but we will be able to result dozens more tests on these analyzers than we were before. And so, that's great news for patients who their labs won't maybe be sent out. We'll be able to result them here locally. We're also installing a brand new MRI, which is great news because, again, it's brand new equipment. As you know, if you bought a computer recently or a cell phone, as soon as you buy it, it's out of date. So, we'll have brand new equipment for our MRI and it will be able to do additional tests. And so, for some things that patients currently can't have done here, we'll be able to do locally, and that's really exciting.
We're also looking to expand cardiology services in the community, and so that's something that is on the horizon. And wellness, right? I mean, I think the younger generations even are more and more interested in their personal health and wellness, and it is the future of healthcare. Anything that we can prevent and that will add quality years to our life really is where it's at in healthcare and that's part of our mission. Wellness is part of our mission, which is something I'm so proud of. So, I would look to the future for us to continue to expand our wellness services, embed those into primary care even, be helping people with not just when they're sick, but to help keep them well and keep them in their communities and thriving in their communities.
So, those are just a couple of things. And I mean, we don't have all day, but if we did, I could keep talking because that's how we roll at the Outer Banks Hospital and Medical Group. We're just an innovative group of people who want to care for this community.
Jen Schwartzenberg: I agree with you, Amy. There's so many things, so many wonderful things, and right along the wellness is that new mobile health coach that's going to be arriving in 2023. I would be remiss if I didn't share about that, I know. So if you're listening to this and you've been in our community for some time, you know that the Outer Banks Hospital had a mobile health coach, but then it started to break down and it would strand my team out in the field and they would call me and say, "Jen, Health Coach isn't starting again." So, we needed to replace that health coach and we bought a new health coach, ordered it in February of 2021, and then this pesky little supply chain issues thing became a norm for lots of stuff. And so, we still have not received that health coach, but I will share that it is in the process of being outfitted right now. I've seen pictures of the interior where it's going to have two private exam rooms for providers and clinicians to be out in the community offering free wellness screens, A1c screens, skin checks, colon cancer screenings, all sorts of great things happening on that health coach. So, that is something that ties right into our wellness and our mission of wellness in our community. And I can't wait to introduce the community to our new mobile health coach.
Amy Montgomery: It is going to be fantastic.
Wendy Kelly: It really is.
Jen Schwartzenberg: I'm excited.
Wendy Kelly: We are just continually growing and you know what? We're evolving. From day one, we have added and moved and changed and evolved. Our brand is about that. It is about evolution and continually moving forward.
Amy Montgomery: Yeah, you don't see it stopping anytime soon.
Wendy Kelly: I don't see it stopping.
Jen Schwartzenberg: And I invite the community to talk to us, call us, email us at obhinfo.com and let us know what you're thinking. We do listen. We do hear the feedback. And hey, if we don't have the idea and you do, you never know, we might be able to offer a service here in the community that we currently don't have.
Wendy Kelly: Well, thanks, Amy, for being a part of our last podcast of 2022.
Amy Montgomery: It's been fun. Thank you.
Wendy Kelly: Jen's inauguration here on the series. If you've enjoyed this podcast, go to our library and listen to the others that we have there at theobh.com/podcast. I'm your co-host, Wendy Kelly.
Jen Schwartzenberg: And I'm Jen Schwarzenberg. We'll see you next time.
Wendy Kelly: Bye.
Amy Montgomery: Bye.
Jen Schwartzenberg: Bye.
Welcoming the Future with Open Arms
Wendy Kelly: Welcome to Outer Banks's Health, the official podcast series of the Outer Banks Hospital and Medical Group, where we discuss health topics of interest to the community. I'm your co-host, Wendy Kelly. And because today is the last podcast of 2022, we thought it would be interesting to take a look at some of the highlights and the challenges from this past year, as well as speak to our organization's ability to continue to evolve and grow. But first, I'm thrilled to introduce our new podcast cohost, Jennifer Schwartzenberg. Hey, Jen. Welcome. Are you ready for this?
Jen Schwartzenberg: Hi, Wendy. How are you? It's great to be here.
Wendy Kelly: Great. I'm glad you're here.
Jen Schwartzenberg: Thank you. I'm super excited to be a new addition to our Outer Banks Health Podcast series. I know that we have some really exciting topics that we've already started brainstorming for 2023. And we are joined by someone else today. Amy Montgomery is our Senior Administrator of Operations for the Outer Banks Hospital. Welcome, Amy. Hello.
Amy Montgomery: Hi Jen. How are you guys? Hi Jen. Hi, Wendy.
Wendy Kelly: Hi, Amy. What have things been like for you, Amy, over the past couple of years? And how have we endured and pressed through some of the challenges that we've encountered?
Amy Montgomery: Yeah. Well, I love how Jennifer talked about our outreach efforts and hiring someone new and the cancer center and all those great things. But I would be remiss not to talk about some of the challenges we've been through, especially with COVID, right? I know everybody wants to forget about it and move on, but it really has impacted us here at the Outer Banks Hospital. But the real story here is we've been through the impact and we thrived through it, and we are really on a great path forward, innovating, and really excited to share some great things with you today.
Wendy Kelly: One of the things that I think about when you mentioned COVID is just how amazing our team members are and how they push through. So many resources were retrenched, human resources. And folks just figured out how to do their job no matter what. And I think there's just a true love and passion for this community.
Amy Montgomery: I couldn't agree more. I mean, I think the community as a whole, the Outer Banks, we are a people who come together to serve our community and to serve, you know, our residents, our visitors, just with a smile and hospitality. And we just really go out of our way to provide just a great experience, whether you're a visitor or a patient at the hospital. And your comments about how we really thrived through COVID really make me think about the day a couple of years ago. It was in March of 2020 when our director of cancer services at the time called me and said, "Amy, everything is shutting down, but we can't shut down cancer services. We have to continue to provide chemotherapy and radiation therapy to our cancer patients." This is like life-saving treatment and we can't miss a beat. And I just looked at her and I said, "You're right." And we kept going and we figured out how to distance patients, how to screen them before they came in, how to make sure everything was cleaned and sanitized, how to wear masks. And our cancer services team didn't miss a beat. We continued to provide in-person care every single day through the entire pandemic.
Wendy Kelly: We really did.
Jen Schwartzenberg: Well, in community outreach, it was a little different, thinking back about the last couple years, right around that same time that Amy mentioned back in March of 2020. We had just come off the most successful Outer Ranks Hospital Gala, raising about $175,000 for the cancer center. And we thought we were going to roll right into our capital campaign to help raise the funds to build that center. But then, COVID hit and that was not an ideal time to obviously meet with our donors. There was so much uncertainty during that time and we just really wanted to be respectful of everything that everybody was going through. So, we really kind of took a backseat and did not start the capital campaign until about seven months later, after we had some time to kind of figure things out, maybe change our approach to our meetings with donors. And certainly, we did a ton of Zoom meetings and a few meetings outside and just tried to get creative so that we could still connect with our community and with our donors as we started to work on and think about the cancer center. So, that's something I think about and I'm just so grateful to be working on that project and now seeing the building coming out of the ground and knowing that we have had such tremendous community support with over $5.6 million raised for this project. We broke the 5.6-million mark this morning.
Wendy Kelly: That's amazing.
Amy Montgomery: That's exciting.
Wendy Kelly: It really is.
Amy Montgomery: Yeah. Jen, I remember the day you came in my office and said, "Can we start this campaign?" And I was like, "Oh, I guess so. Why not? You know, in a global pandemic, we can raise money." And even though so many donors couldn't meet in person, you made phone calls, you called on people. And I can't say enough about how you and your team and the Cancer Center campaign and the Development Council have really just pushed through everything that we've gone through and raise this money. And then, I can't say enough about our generous donors. And I've been with you on some of those fundraising calls and it is just so heartwarming and it is so exciting and invigorating to speak with donors who are giving not only their time to meet with us, but then their treasures and really pouring into the Cancer Center. And they believe in our mission and they're so thankful that we're here and that their family members or their friends have been able to receive care here. And I'm just so thankful for our donors.
Jen Schwartzenberg: I am too, Amy. I mean, to have those meetings and to have those connections with people and really share with them what this center is going to mean for our patients, having all of the cancer services under one roof, the impact it's going to make and the life-saving work that's going to continue to happen in that new building. And then, them saying, "No, thank you for letting me give to this project. I mean, it's really just an incredible opportunity and experience to be a part of this. So, hats off to those cancer services team members who tirelessly are working every day to help those patients.
Amy Montgomery: Absolutely. But it's not all been like rose-colored glasses this year either. Wendy, I know you welcomed us in to talk about 2022, the Cancer Center campaign and some of our outreach efforts. And we've had so many highlights, but we've had some challenges as well. And I can just say that access to primary care has certainly been a local challenge. It's been a national challenge and the things that happened this summer were never things that we wanted to experience in our community. And our hearts go out to any individuals impacted over the summer and still impacted really through access to healthcare. But still the real story here is we're getting through this, we have dug deep, we are committed. Our team has never skipped a beat.
Wendy Kelly: They really have. Hats off to those folks who despite how the community was reacting and they kept moving forward and said, "We've got this. We're going to be okay. It's going to be okay." And I'm just so proud of them.
Amy Montgomery: Yeah, I am too. I mean, just to think that how many challenges there are across the country and to know that now we're sitting in a position to have more access to primary care in our community. And I think we're projected by February of '23 to have enough providers in the community to be taking on a couple of thousand brand new patients. And I'm just so proud of that. And I'm just happy that we can continue to provide access because that's what our team members are all about.
Wendy Kelly: That's our mission.
Amy Montgomery: And then, healthcare is not the only industry who's suffering these labor shortages and these labor challenges. I mean, everything that happened was around just people making different decisions about where they want to work and where they want to live. And that's true in the restaurant industry. That's true in the retail industry. We've had issues with supply chain. We've had issues with all types of things because of the labor market and the labor shortages. And it's been true in healthcare as well, and the housing crisis. But still, here we sit after some challenges in 2022, and 2023 looks really bright.
Wendy Kelly: It really does. And we had some great highlights in 2022. Like, how about the fact that we became breast cancer-accredited? We're a National Breast Cancer-accredited center.
Amy Montgomery: Yeah, absolutely. Hats off to Dr. Charles Shelton. I hope anyone listening doesn't know him. But if you do know him, maybe it's because you have had a cancer diagnosis, unfortunately. But those who know him, know him and love him. And he leads, he really leads our cancer services. And about a year and a half ago, he came to myself and Beverly Jones, our Director of Cancer Services, and says, "We can get breast-accredited." And we said, "Okay, here we go." And in August, we actually became accredited by the American College of Surgeons Commission on Cancer Breast Accreditation Program. And it's not only a seal of high quality healthcare, but it also just guarantees the community that we are here to provide the best access to healthcare that we possibly can. And we'll show in some numbers that you're getting ready to publish in our annual report that we have actually reduced the mortality rate from breast cancer. We've cut it in half here in Dare County.
Wendy Kelly: It's incredible. It really is. And I do want to mention that getting that accreditation, we're the first hospital of our size in the nation to have an accredited breast cancer center and to do that when everything else was going on this year is just a testament to the dedication that our team has to this community.
Amy Montgomery: And we focus a lot on cancer care as we should. And we have so many other service lines that are thriving and innovating. And we also have our stroke accreditation, which is just amazing. And I'd like to focus on that for just a couple of minutes because we are literally saving lives for people who have stroke, and we weren't doing this five years ago. But now, we are stroke-accredited. And if someone is brought to our emergency department by ambulance and maybe they think they're having a stroke, we are able to quickly diagnose them and stabilize them and then transfer them to the appropriate level of care. And that's something that we weren't able to do just a short number of years ago. And I'm so proud of our team.
And the other thing I'll say about that is we do listen to feedback from the community. It is important that we listen and we're hearing what people are saying out there in the community about us, because it just helps us be better, right?
Wendy Kelly: Absolutely.
Amy Montgomery: And so, we always hear, we hear often that, "You know, the Outer Banks Hospital, they're just a transfer center, right? If you go there, you're just going to get transferred." And I want to say that sometimes that's right. But that's something we're also really proud of because, if you come to the Outer Banks Hospital, and let's say for example, you're having a stroke, now we have a team that is trained to make an accurate diagnose, maybe administer tPA, which is a life-saving clot-busting medication that we were not able to administer just a few short years ago and then packaging up that patient and transferring them to a higher level of care. And that is literally saving lives, saving quality of life. And I just feel so fortunate and blessed to have this accreditation, have these trained team members that live in a community that can make a high quality correct diagnosis and transfer. And so, you know what I say sometimes is, "Yeah, we might be sometimes a transfer center, but we're a damn good one. "
Wendy Kelly: We are.
Jen Schwartzenberg: I agree, and I would love to touch on that stroke accreditation for a minute. I've been lucky enough to work with the stroke committee and team that we have here at the hospital through some of our outreach efforts. We do stroke risk assessments out in the community at least four times a year, where we go out and do stroke education, provide a lunch and really let people know what are the first signs and symptoms of a stroke because it comes on so quickly. And now that we have the accreditation here and are able to administer the tPA and stabilize a patient, it's important to recognize those warning signs.
Something else that's kind of cool is we've also received a grant to go out into our five elementary schools. We're going to start in January and February and we have an assembly that we're going to be bringing to all of the fourth graders. There's 377 fourth graders across the county that are going to get a book and a magnet and some information and see some cool videos that a lot of times, that age group, they spend a lot of time with maybe elderly caregivers, babysitters, or their grandparents or parents that just educating these fourth graders is going to be the first stab at going out into that youth, into that community, that age group and sharing this information. So, I'm super excited to have our team be a part of that life-changing work as well.
Amy Montgomery: Yeah, Jen. I have a friend in Manteo who has spoken to me about the fact that the education that you guys put out there about stroke, actually she used it and witnessed a friend of hers having a stroke and called 911, got that person here quickly and saved that person's quality of life. And so, the education that you're doing, your team is doing now for even younger and younger people is going to save lives.
Wendy Kelly: Absolutely. I'm really excited about that.
Jen Schwartzenberg: Me too, me too.
Wendy Kelly: Amy, what about the future? What does the future hold for the Outer Banks Hospital and Medical Group?
Amy Montgomery: It's like what our president, Ronnie Sloan, says, "If we can do it here and we can do it well, we'll try." And so, another thing that people in the community sometimes say or the perception is that, "Well, why don't we have an ICU?" or "Why don't we do cardiac surgery?" And I think those are excellent questions. Those are really good questions because, if you don't work in the industry, you would think, "Well, why don't we have those things here?" I mean, we do fantastic cancer care. We have stroke accreditation. Why can't we have an ICU and those other things?
And so, I'd like to address that because it does get to an answer to your question, which is, what does a future hold? But first, I think it's important to say, like I said, we'll do what we can that we can do here safely. The reason we don't have an ICU, the reason we don't do cardiac surgery here and those types of things is because, if you're going to have a high level of care like that or if you're going to have a cardiac surgery, you want to go somewhere where those people are doing it all day every day, right? You want your surgeon to be doing 10 surgeries a day, not 10 a year. You want that ICU staff to be caring for a large number of patients on a regular basis. And the fact is we just don't have the volume here to sustain competency. So, we wouldn't have our teams or our providers treating enough patients regularly throughout the year to maintain their competency at those highly skilled things. And so for those reasons, we are not going to grow into those areas because we just don't have the volume. It's no different than maybe why we don't have a Chick-fil-A here or some franchises say, "You have to have 40,000 permanent residents before we'll build X business." And for us, it's not about the bottom line. Truly, it's not. It's about the competency of the people providing the care.
So to answer your question, I mean, it is true, our president, Ronnie Sloan, and the rest of our executive team, when people bring ideas to us, we really do consider it. And if we can do it safely and well, we will consider it. I mean, for example, we have a fantastic urologist here now and she's doing all kinds of innovative in-office procedures as well as things in the OR. We just have so many things that we're doing that the community has recommended over the past years of scalp cooling therapy for cancer services. I'm looking at you, Jen. I know you've benefited from that.
Jen Schwartzenberg: Yes, I did.
Amy Montgomery: Just looking at your beautiful hair. But we were the third hospital in the state of North Carolina to do scalp cooling therapy for cancer patients.
Wendy Kelly: And I just want to remind everybody, we are a critical access hospital that's 21 beds or less. We live on an island. We are remote and the fact that we have a lot and even more than some of the bigger hospitals in North Carolina is just incredible.
Amy Montgomery: Absolutely. So, I know I've talked in circles, but I am going to answer your question. So, what does the future look like? The future looks like we're expanding our laboratory right now inside the hospital. For the past year and a half, we've been under a master facility plan. And so, we have purchased some new chemistry analyzers, the equipment is so large, we're expanding the lab in part to accommodate these larger analyzers, but we will be able to result dozens more tests on these analyzers than we were before. And so, that's great news for patients who their labs won't maybe be sent out. We'll be able to result them here locally. We're also installing a brand new MRI, which is great news because, again, it's brand new equipment. As you know, if you bought a computer recently or a cell phone, as soon as you buy it, it's out of date. So, we'll have brand new equipment for our MRI and it will be able to do additional tests. And so, for some things that patients currently can't have done here, we'll be able to do locally, and that's really exciting.
We're also looking to expand cardiology services in the community, and so that's something that is on the horizon. And wellness, right? I mean, I think the younger generations even are more and more interested in their personal health and wellness, and it is the future of healthcare. Anything that we can prevent and that will add quality years to our life really is where it's at in healthcare and that's part of our mission. Wellness is part of our mission, which is something I'm so proud of. So, I would look to the future for us to continue to expand our wellness services, embed those into primary care even, be helping people with not just when they're sick, but to help keep them well and keep them in their communities and thriving in their communities.
So, those are just a couple of things. And I mean, we don't have all day, but if we did, I could keep talking because that's how we roll at the Outer Banks Hospital and Medical Group. We're just an innovative group of people who want to care for this community.
Jen Schwartzenberg: I agree with you, Amy. There's so many things, so many wonderful things, and right along the wellness is that new mobile health coach that's going to be arriving in 2023. I would be remiss if I didn't share about that, I know. So if you're listening to this and you've been in our community for some time, you know that the Outer Banks Hospital had a mobile health coach, but then it started to break down and it would strand my team out in the field and they would call me and say, "Jen, Health Coach isn't starting again." So, we needed to replace that health coach and we bought a new health coach, ordered it in February of 2021, and then this pesky little supply chain issues thing became a norm for lots of stuff. And so, we still have not received that health coach, but I will share that it is in the process of being outfitted right now. I've seen pictures of the interior where it's going to have two private exam rooms for providers and clinicians to be out in the community offering free wellness screens, A1c screens, skin checks, colon cancer screenings, all sorts of great things happening on that health coach. So, that is something that ties right into our wellness and our mission of wellness in our community. And I can't wait to introduce the community to our new mobile health coach.
Amy Montgomery: It is going to be fantastic.
Wendy Kelly: It really is.
Jen Schwartzenberg: I'm excited.
Wendy Kelly: We are just continually growing and you know what? We're evolving. From day one, we have added and moved and changed and evolved. Our brand is about that. It is about evolution and continually moving forward.
Amy Montgomery: Yeah, you don't see it stopping anytime soon.
Wendy Kelly: I don't see it stopping.
Jen Schwartzenberg: And I invite the community to talk to us, call us, email us at obhinfo.com and let us know what you're thinking. We do listen. We do hear the feedback. And hey, if we don't have the idea and you do, you never know, we might be able to offer a service here in the community that we currently don't have.
Wendy Kelly: Well, thanks, Amy, for being a part of our last podcast of 2022.
Amy Montgomery: It's been fun. Thank you.
Wendy Kelly: Jen's inauguration here on the series. If you've enjoyed this podcast, go to our library and listen to the others that we have there at theobh.com/podcast. I'm your co-host, Wendy Kelly.
Jen Schwartzenberg: And I'm Jen Schwarzenberg. We'll see you next time.
Wendy Kelly: Bye.
Amy Montgomery: Bye.
Jen Schwartzenberg: Bye.