Grande Ronde Hospital | FY2019 | Community Benefit Report

FY2019 Community Benefit Report Get the care you need —Continued on page 2 GRH Financial Counselors (from left) Kim Kennicott, Dena Huff, Susan Lambert, Mariah Scates and Teresa Leddon-Minch A few years ago, Tim McCoy, La Grande, was surprised to find out he had broken his hip. “I thought it was a sprain,” he recalls, noting he has a pretty high tolerance for pain. “I walked around on it for a couple days thinking I could work it out, but it wasn’t getting better.” When he wound up in the ER at Grande Ronde Hospital (GRH), x-rays confirmed his hip was indeed broken. The doctor encouraged him to consider having it replaced, but Tim was worried how he would pay for it. “If I did it, I knew I wanted Dr. [Ben] Olson to do it—he has a good reputation. I was worried about the cost, but it was pretty messed up and needed to be done, so I said—let’s light this candle! I had no idea how I was going to pay for it,” he admits. One of Tim’s friends was working at GRH at the time and encouraged him to look into the Hospital’s financial assistance program. Tim worked with one of our financial counselors to complete all the paperwork, which made the process very easy for him. “I didn’t expect anything, and they ended up paying for the whole thing,” he says. The GRH mission states that all patients in need of our services will have access to necessary medical care. As an independent and locally controlled health system, the decisions on how to fulfill that mission are made by the people who live, work and play here. Because of this, GRH has been able to build a financial assistance program that ensures our patients receive care regardless of ability to pay. Hands-on help for patients In 2013, Karli Wright, Director of Business Services, tapped Teresa Leddon-Minch from the Hospital’s Billing Department to become the first Patient Financial Counselor. Today there are five. Teresa Leddon-Minch is located in the Hospital; Susan Lambert and Mariah Scates are at the GRH Pavilion; Kim Kennicott is located in the Regional Medical Clinic; and Dena Huff is in the Regional Medical Plaza. Then two years ago Carrie Laurence, also from the Billing Department, was asked to coordinate and work with the Counselors, as well as the patient account specialists in the Billing Department, as the Patient Financial Services Manager. “When Karli offered me this position, she also asked me to develop some goals for the program. The first thing I wanted to look at was how to bring our receivables down. We have an incredibly generous financial assistance Patient Financial Services Program helps patients focus on their health—not their bill