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Becker’s Healthcare Podcast
Stephanie Everett, Administrator of Mountrail Bethel Home and Chief Executive Officer of Mountrail County Medical Center
00:13:06
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- [00:00]
A
This is Laura Deardle with the Beckers Healthcare Podcast. I'm thrilled today to be joined by Stephanie Everett, Administrator of Montreal Bethel Home and Chief Executive Officer of Montreal County Medical Center. Stephanie, it's a pleasure to have you on the podcast today.
- [00:14]
B
Hi, Emma. It's a pleasure to be here.
- [00:17]
A
Fantastic. Well, I'm looking forward to our conversation and getting a sense of some of the great things that you have been doing over the last year, as well as your perspective on the future. But before we dive in, can you tell us a little bit more about yourself, your background and the organization?
- [00:32]
B
My name is Stephanie Everett. I have been with the Montreal county health center since 2013. I came in as the foundation director in 2013 for the Montreal County Health Foundation. Six years ago, actually in March. I then took the classes ahead of time to become the administrator of the Montreal Bethel Home. And I'm also then the CEO of the Montreal County Medical Center. Inside that campus, it's one attached campus. We are a 36 bed nursing home with 10 basic care. We have 14 units of assisted living that is attached to the nursing home along with being attached to an ER and an 11 bed critical access hospital and a rural health clinic. So we are a total campus of continued care and it's all under one roof, which is lovely. In North Dakota, we are an hour away from the Canadian border, so it gets a little chilly in the wintertime. So it's really nice to be able to offer all these services to our residents under one roof.
- [01:36]
A
That's amazing to hear. Now, when you think of the last year or so, what was the most important initiative you led? What did you do and what were the results?
- [01:45]
B
We broke ground last July for a new nursing home facility that is still going to be attached and that is coming to fruition. We're going to be opening that up in like a month and a half. And so, you know, you don't make money running a nursing home, but who's going to take care of your elderly as they age? And so I've been really working hard to raise the money to build the new nursing home, have it be fully funded with grants and donations. And that rotation has come to pass. We have been able to raise the grants or raise the money for grants and donations. And we did market analysis with and one of the things that we found was the service area population is going to be growing over the next five years for anywhere between 70 to 85, 70 years old to 85. It's around 31% that we're going to see a growth in that elderly population. And so leading into the next question that you're going to, you know that will be coming up is we are in a $53 million building project, like I said, with the new nursing home opening up in a month and a half and the last portion of the build out in end of 2027 is more assisted living. And we have a waiting list of 32 people on that waiting list for assisted living.
- [03:11]
A
Wow, that's incredible to know. I know this huge undertaking to build any new facilities, but especially a project that's so important to the community and will really make an impact on the lives and folks who are able to gain their services. So I guess if we're digging a little bit deeper, where do you see some of those big priorities as well as headwinds when you are thinking of these big projects, expansion and ways that you want to continue to develop going forward?
- [03:38]
B
Not only are we going to be opening the new facility this spring and then continuing construction on the, on the medical side into 27, we are actually going, we are switching from Cerner to EPIC in 26. So not only do we have this huge big building project going on that literally takes up the entire campus and both sides of the nursing home and the medical center side, my poor little medical center side is now diving into an EHR, you know, a new EHR coming in October. So 26 is going to be a really pivotal year for us with a lot of amazing growth.
- [04:15]
A
That's fantastic to hear and exciting. I know all those things are huge undertaking. So when you look at your executive team, what are you doing to make sure that you're moving things forward operationally? How have you worked with them to design the vision of what you want to be in the future? Can you take us a little bit more inside of your leadership team process and how you're going to continue to keep the momentum going?
- [04:39]
B
You want to keep them grounded, you want to keep the team focused. With so much going on, I just had some of my one on ones. I try to be in front of them all the time. I try to have one on one conversations with them a lot, several times. Because they talk more personally when you're with them rather than in their manager meetings and in the big groups and things like that. One of them that they have been saying is they feel disorganized because there's so much going on. Like so much going on. But then I'm always there for them to be able to help them. How do they grow more inside their leadership roles. You want the right people in the seats. You want to give them the power to grow into their positions. We do do a high road leadership. There is a leadership program that all of them can be a part of. Right now we're in John Maxwell's High Road Leadership book. And the one thing that chapter eight is coming up next week. And the one item that really stuck out to me reading this chapter was people would rather follow a leader who is always real than one who is always right. And I love Craig Groeschel. I've watched podcasts of. He is just amazing with how he has vision and how he wants his team around them to grow. And I don't micromanage, I don't want to micromanage at all, all of that. And you need to listen to them and you need to understand their concerns. And you want to, not only you want to understand their concerns, you want to be able to act on their concerns within reason and be able to help them grow and be able to see the vision. And one of the examples is we're in this middle of a $53 million project and the PT department is downstairs underneath the hospital. And inside that space is going to be a new specialist clinic. So we can bring in specialists inside that market analysis that we did with ide, we can see where the growth capabilities are. We can see where the specialist growth is going to be. So that was key that we wanted to bring in specialists to Montro county because we're an hour away from our tertiary hospital in Minot. And so but then the one thing that led into, you know, from one of my one on ones is my PT then looked at me and she goes, steph, we're really growing. And with the specialist clinic sitting there, you know, then it's going to be kind of busy down here, you know, and it's a small little space. So now on top of all of this and all the growth inside the market analysis, it says rehab, the, you know, inpatient service line of rehab is going to grow like 27% over the next 10 years. So now that's actually something we're talking about with the current construction company that is building our four year project. Working on the four year project, do we take PT off site? Do we build just a clinic for them? They'd be the easiest one to take off site. And then we also have so many travelers. As we all know, the workforce for nursing is really hard. So we have a lot of travelers for PT and then our error. And then we could Build apartments on top of the PT clinic. So that would kind of be a twofold, you know, where it'd be nice apartments for our travelers to be, you know, to live in when they're here. And then we'd be able to, you know, take on that 10 year growth of 27% and build a really nice P clinic off site. It's only a couple blocks away from the current hospital and if they needed to, they do a lot of rehabilitation inside of our nursing home. We have a really big, gorgeous restorative therapy room inside the new nursing home just to keep the residents moving and, you know, and walking as long as they possibly can. And so then it would be an easy drive to come over, you know, from there. So, yeah, don't want to get bored, right?
- [08:26]
A
It's always something to do. No, I really think that is so critical. As you were talking about how you're working with your leadership team, making sure you're not micromanaging, but really listening to them, understanding some of the challenges as well as things that they're seeing on the ground, and then being able to troubleshoot, work through and find solutions and, you know, look at ways that really can improve the organization overall as well as service to patients. So, you know, it's incredible to think through all of that. What do you think the hardest thing you'll have to do will be?
- [08:59]
B
The hardest thing will keep is I'll have to keep them, like I said, focused because there's so much going on and you want to be in front of them and you don't. I'm a visionary and I love just challenges. But a lot of them don't love challenges. You know, like I, you know, we all do disk assessments and I'm very, I'm a D, I'm a high D. But a lot of my staff are S's and they don't like, they don't like confrontation and they don't like, you know, taking on the big tasks and figuring out how to, you know, do the, do the hard topics and the hard conversations. And so that's the one thing that I don't want to get them uncomfortable in a situation. I want to be able to listen, listen to what they're saying. But I also want to challenge them too, you know, because growth is great across the board if it's done and done right, especially with leadership.
- [09:48]
A
For sure. I think that's, you know, so important and definitely helpful to understand the propensities. But then figure out where, you know, the great leaders, managers and coaches it seems like can find the levers or buttons that they need to press in order to make their teams, you know, inspire that growth and get them into a position where they can truly, you know, level up in a meaningful way.
- [10:11]
B
Exactly. And it's been fun watching them grow. A lot of them have been coaching over the last year in the leadership growth, and one of them on the one on ones yesterday, she had taken on a couple challenges inside of radiology, and she just knocked it out of the park. She goes, I would have just a year ago went, oh, that's okay. We won't have to offer that service. But she was like, no, we're offering that service. No, this is why it was really cute watching her just be excited, you know, that she was able to tackle that challenge. And we're still. We're able to bring the service in, you know, so it's. It's been fun watching them grow. So it's very fun.
- [10:45]
A
Absolutely. That's fantastic. And speaking of growth, where do you see some of the best opportunities for organizational growth overall? I know we've talked a little bit about some of those capital investments and space where you're trying to expand services, but, you know, anything else you'd like to talk about and touch on when you think about growth going forward?
- [11:06]
B
As you know, we have the new nursing home. It's going to be the same footprint as we have 36 beds, skilled 10 basic care. The one area that we can do more services and more growth is on the hospital side. We're bringing in an MRI machine. We're bringing in a treatment area that we can maybe do some different items, you know, some different outside the box thinking for different services that we can offer. Montreal county and all that. The one thing we always have to be careful with, and the one thing I really want to pay attention to, I don't want to grow too fast. I want to grow reasonable. I want to grow what makes sense. And I don't want to get my current staff nervous because we all know living in rural North Dakota, it's hard to recruit. Right now we're recruiting a radiologist, and we're always wanting to recruit PTs and ER nurses. And so you don't want to grow too fast. That makes your current staff going, hey, wait a minute, you know, things like that. So we just want to grow within reason. And so that's going to be the next step. Moving into 26 and all of 27 is an expanding the medical center side, but within reason, comfortable growth, reasonable growth. Yeah.
- [12:20]
A
So absolutely reasonable growth. I love it. Well, Stephanie, thank you so much for joining us on the podcast today. This has been such an inspiring conversation, and I look forward to seeing you at our annual meeting in April. I know you'll be speaking on a panel, and it'll be truly our pleasure and honor to have you there in digging deeper into some of these themes, as well as sharing with the broader network of healthcare executives and leaders how some of the lessons you've learned and things you're thinking about for the future. So I look forward to that.
- [12:48]
B
I look forward to it. Also. I love that conference.