Helmsley Trust donates money to county

SUPERIOR - The American Heart Association in Missoula received a generous grant late last month, in an effort to improve survival rates of heart attack patients in rural Montana.

The Leona M. and Harry B. Helmsley Charitable Trust donated $4.6 million to the American Heart Association’s Mission: Lifeline to enhance heart attack treatment in rural Montana, said Amanda Andrews, quality and systems improvement director for the American Heart Association in Missoula.

“The money is going to go toward 12-lead electrocardiograms (ECG) and transmitting equipment for ambulances and hospitals,” Andrews said.

An ECG is used to monitor heart rhythm while transporting the patient to the hospital. One 12-Lead ECG can cost about $25,000 with all the accessories, according to the American Heart Association.

The money could also be made available to ambulance services, fire departments or whoever has the highest need for the equipment. Medical providers who are interested in securing some of the funds from the grant would have to apply and be accepted before any of the funds are awarded, Andrews said.

However, not all applications will receive funding. The applications are currently being created by a task force and would be made available by June or July, she said.

“We hope to reach the vast majority of needs throughout the state,” Andrews said.

In Mineral County, any funding that the hospital can secure would definitely benefit the community, said Larry Putnam, interim CEO for Mineral Community Hospital.

“It’s difficult because of the terrain to get signals around,” Putnam said. “An ECG machine will allow ambulances to telemetry a patient directly to our hospital. It would be a direct benefit in this community, and improve the quality of heart attack victims.”

The faster you can handle those patients and get them into the system, the better off that patient is, Putnam said.

In most rural areas where Mission: Lifeline hopes to target, the facilities are limited, which creates the need for patient transfer and results in more delays, Andrews said.

The American Heart Association’s plan for the money from the Helmsley Foundation, is for the money to be distributed and spread out between 2014-2016.

“I think it’s incredible and it’s going to benefit people like us,” said Chris Watson, radiology manager at Mineral Community Hospital. “There is no doubt. It’s awesome. We want to be able to offer top notch services to everybody.”

In Helmsley We Trust

The Mineral Community Hospital has been here before. The Helmsley Trust donated a $464,821 grant in 2013 to make an additional upgrade to the radiology department, Putnam said.

“We put in a digital mammography, a machine that produces clear imaging for breast exams,” Putnam said. “It’s pretty amazing that a community of this size has a digital mammo, it’s pretty expensive.”

Putnam said there is still some money left from that grant which ultimately can be used for further training of the machine, although most of the grant has been spent to buy and install the machine.

“You couldn’t apply for this money directly from the Helmsley Trust,” Putnam said. “Somehow they contacted the hospital and invited us to apply for the money for the digital mammography. It really improves the quality with what we have going on in imaging.”

The Mineral Community Hospital is one of four facilities in the state that has received money from the Helmsley Trust, Watson said.

“It was a true gift, because we were still on the analog mammography or film,” Watson said.

For now, the Mineral Community Hospital will have to wait and see if more funds will be available to upgrade this local hospital.

“For a very small rural critical access hospital, we just have really excellent imaging,” Putnam said. “It’s very unusual for this size community.”