CFVH receives grant for better health

PLAINS - Clark Fork Valley Hospital partnered with the Frontier Medicine Better Health Partnership through a grant to improve healthcare in Sanders County. The grant funding was made possible by the federal Affordable Care Act, the Center of Medicare and Medicaid Innovation which provided $1 billion in grant funding to projects that would aim to improve health outcomes and care and increase efficiencies while lowering total healthcare expenditures. There were over 3,000 applicants who applied for the funds and of them 700 were approved. The Frontier Medicine Better Health Partnership is comprised of 25 critical access hospitals throughout the state of Montana including CFVH.

After receiving the grant, CFVH began their search to find a Community Health Improvement Specialist for Sanders County to carry out the grant requirements. In November 2013, CFVH found the perfect person for the job in Brandy Kincheloe.

A Wyoming native, Kincheloe says she, “was blown up to Missoula by the wild Wyoming winds about nine years ago.”  After completing her Associates Degree in Interpersonal Communication with the Human Emphasis and her Bachelor’s degree in Sociology, she found that Montana was a great place to call home and stayed. She later found herself working at a Skilled Nursing Facility as the Director of Social Services and then in the Nutrition Department at Missoula Aging Services. These two positions provided her the opportunity to work with community non-profits and resources that she will tap into in a similar way in her new position at CFVH.

“I’m thrilled to work in such a great rural community with a fantastic hospital,” said Kincheloe. “I hope that my background in working with seniors and those who have disabilities, as well as facilitating programs, will serve me to drive them to a thriving point.”

As of 2012, the federal government began requiring non profit Critical Access Hospitals to complete a Community Health Needs Assessment (CHNA) every three years. CFVH got a head start on the requirement and conducted assessments in 2007 and 2012 in coordination with the Montana office of Rural Health. With a few CHNAs already completed, Kincheloe’s initial to-do list included reviewing the most current CHNA to assess community health needs, research available resources in the area, including ones that might not be well known, and then create an implementation plan for CFVH to better improve the health of Sanders County residents.

“We want to engage our community to improve their health. The first step is addressing what they need and want,” Kincheloe said.

Out of 675 randomly distributed surveys across Sanders County, 195 were returned for a 29 percent response rate for the 2012 CHNA. The CHNA was 35 questions pertaining to the healthcare system in Sanders County. Data analysis showed things like perception, utilization, patient satisfaction, demographics, services preferred locally and reasons for selection.

Further assessment will be done with the help of key informant interviews, steering committees and focus groups throughout the county in 2014. 

If you are interested in shaping the future of healthcare services in the county, you are invited to attend one of the following open forum focus groups facilitated by the Montana office of Rural Health:

Focus Group #1:  at Clark Fork Valley Hospital, February 27, 2014, 3:00 p.m. – 4:00 p.m.

Focus Group #2: at the Thompson Falls Senior Center, February 28, 2014, 11:30 a.m. – 12:30 p.m.

For more information or to review past CHNAs and the 2013 Implementation Plan, please visit www.cfvh.org or call Brandy Kincheloe, CFVH Community Health Improvement Specialist at 826-4669.