Hospital praise well deserved

By Dave Churchill (Contact) | The Daily Journal

Published Friday, September 14, 2007

When The Journal’s Tom Hintgen wrote a story back in August about Lake Region Hospital, it was good news. The local medical facility had been recognized as one of the top 20 small community hospitals in the United States, based on its continued improvements in quality of care over the last five years.

The story interested me for a couple of reasons, not least because I was scheduled to have surgery at Lake Region on Sept. 7. More on that in a minute. Meanwhile, it was nice to see that Lake Region was getting some recognition for the almost continual expansions and improvements that it has made.

Still, that’s an opinion that not everyone shares. When we posted the hospital rating story on The Journal’s web site, some readers took the opportunity to post complaints about local health care. Others challenged those comments with their own stories of good care.

As I followed the debate, I tended to agree with those who say that Fergus Falls enjoys a standard of health care that is unusually good. My opinion is strictly subjective, but it’s one that I’m confident about because it is built on a good bit of experience as a patient.

My hobbies lean heavily toward sports and moderately aggressive outdoor activities — at all of which I am remarkably clumsy. So I have managed to damage myself via breaking, slicing, sawing, spasming and illness, pretty nearly from coast to coast.

In short, I have seen the inside of many small-city hospitals and clinics. In each case I have survived the care, although sometimes with a vow to never return. Consider, for instance, the lost evening in an Oklahoma emergency room …. Or, better yet, let’s not revisit that episode.

At any rate, my own experience — not to mention the birth of two children and their various emergency room visits — at Lake Region has left me feeling as good as one can about our hospital, the Medical Group next door, and the people who work at both.

I write, “as good as one can,” because nobody much enjoys a visit to the hospital. As a surgical patient, even one who is having what could best be labeled a minor procedure, that feeling of “I don’t want to be here,” can be rather intense, and I was definitely feeling that way last week when I checked in at LRH to have some work done on a beat-up foot.

But I wasn’t as concerned as I might have been, because the run-up had been so good. A week or two before my operation, someone from the hospital’s business office called me to say that they’d already had approval from my insurer to cover all but a small portion of the procedure’s multi-thousand-dollar cost. That will get one smiling.

The day before the operation, another hospital representative called to remind me about the correct arrival time, to double-check on my allergies (those questions about latex are pretty funny), and in general make sure I was set to go. And that was in addition to the briefing and information from Dr. Greg Rouw, who would be doing the procedure.

I arrived a few minutes early and hardly had time to sit down in the lobby before they were calling me back to the same-day surgery center. There, again, the wait was minimal and before I knew it I had met with nurses, the anesthesiologist, the anesthetist and maybe some others whom I’ve forgotten. They were ready early, so was I and, just as promised, the next thing I knew was that I was waking up with some new bandages.

After a light breakfast and the obligatory observation to be sure I was appropriately conscious and healthy, I was on my way home early. A couple days later, someone from the hospital called to make sure I was doing OK. And, of course, I had already had a post-op check-up with Dr. Rouw, who confirmed I was doing well.

As medical stuff goes, it has all been rather … well, pleasant is not the right word, but certainly not unpleasant. Quality of care is always going to be in the eye of the beholder. But by any reasonable standard, I can’t say the care I received during this latest medical situation has been anything but excellent all the way around.

In the context of Lake Region Hospital’s recent top rating, I can’t see it’s anything but well deserved.

Journal publisher Dave Churchill’s column runs on Fridays.