CampusRN Job Blog
Nurses at 2 Montana hospitals want to unionize
Wednesday, April 29, 2009
BILLINGS, Mont. (AP) Some nurses at St. Vincent Healthcare in Billings and Holy Rosary Healthcare in Miles City have renewed efforts to unionize and are trying to join the Montana Nurses Association.
Nurses at both hospitals, which are operated by the Sisters of Charity of Leavenworth, have failed several times to form collective bargaining units. SLC also operates St. James Healthcare in Butte.
Curt Jensen, a nurse at St. Vincent, says a unified voice is needed as health care goes through changes.
posted in: Montana, news
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New mental health facility planned for Bozeman
Monday, March 23, 2009
The Gallatin Mental Health Center is hoping to begin groundbreaking on a new campus within a matter of weeks.
The new facility in Bozeman will be located on five acres of land near Bozeman Deaconess Hospital. The location will leave room for future expansion.
“It’s a long term plan to have certain projects and services available there, so the first program that’s here is going to be hope house, which is crisis residential, so if people go there for 24-hour care when they’re in a crisis. Our hope would be in the next couple weeks, actually, we have bulldozers out there and we’ll have an official groundbreaking ceremony,” Gallatin Mental Health Director Scott Maloy said.
posted in: Montana
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Lawmakers should fund mandated health insurance bill
Monday, February 23, 2009
It’s a rare thing to see legislators openly defy voters, but that’s what four members of a budget committee did on Wednesday.
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Republicans on the evenly divided Joint Appropriations Subcommittee on Health and Human Services blocked funding for the Healthy Montana Kids initiative on a 4-4 party-line vote.
If the measure sounds familiar, that’s because Montana voters approved it by a whopping 70-to-30 margin just three months ago.
posted in: Montana
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New Madison Valley Hospital to open in March
Thursday, February 12, 2009
ENNIS — Patients at the Madison Valley Hospital and Clinic here are greeted in a space that resembles an old living room.
Six chairs line the worn carpet in the tiny waiting room. A nurse’s station to the right looks as though it may once have been the hall to the kitchen.
Opened in 1950, the 217 W. Main St. facility feels like the rural home it was built around.
“Lord only knows how many horses and cows have been through this old building,” said Jim Clavadetscher, risk, infection-control and quality-assurance manager for hospital.
But this March, the hospital and clinic will make a quantum leap.
Thanks in part to millions of dollars raised by the local community, the hospital and clinic will move next door into a new, $10.5 million, 36,500-square-foot facility with sweeping mountains views from every patient room.
posted in: Montana
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Kalispell hospital going smoke free
Thursday, February 05, 2009
The Northwest Healthcare Campus in Kalispell has a big New Year’s Resolution this season, it’s forbidding tobacco products starting on January 1st.
The chief of staff at Kalispell Regional Medical Center says their mission is to promote the health and well-being of the people they serve, and going tobacco free is consistent with that mission.
The Montana Adult Tobacco Survey found that 17% of adults smoked and 12% of men used spit tobacco in 2006.
KRMC Chief of Staff John Van Arendonk said that smoking can cause heart disease, strokes, heart attacks, emphysema, and oral, lung and bladder cancer.
Last January the healthcare campus brought up the idea of going tobacco free, and found a lot of support for it.
posted in: Montana
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VA clinic set to open Monday
Thursday, January 29, 2009
Decades of work are culminating in success with the opening of a Veterans Affairs clinic in Havre Monday. U. S. Sen. Jon Tester, D-Mont., a member of the Senate Veterans Affairs Committee, congratulated the work accomplished on the local level to bring the clinic to Havre — alleviating the stress and long distance of travel for qualifying veterans to receive VA-subsidized health care. “This really has been a grassroots effort that has been really difficult to get through the curves and crannies,” Tester said in a telephone interview from Washington this morning. Previously, qualifying veterans — several thousand in a several-county region around Havre — had to travel to get to a VA clinic. The nearest clinics were in Great Falls and Glasgow and a recently opened clinic in Cut Bank. The U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs has announced VA Healthcare Montana will open the new clinic which will be located in space leased from Northern Montana Hospital, just east of the hospital parking lot in the same complex as the offices of dentists Drs. Michael and Daniel Shelby and the Bullhook Community Health Center. Two years ago, local veteran Merrill Lundman once again brought the issue to the forefront when he started a petition drive to ask for a Havre clinic. Havre had been passed over in the process that brought clinics to Cut Bank and Lewistown. Lundman died in December 2007, about a month before the VA announced it would open a clinic in Havre. Tester said Montana’s congressional delegation will begin work to have the new clinic named in Lundman’s honor, which will take an act of Congress. “It’s unfortunate he’s not still alive to see how his work, early on, came to fruition, to get this to occur … ,” Tester said…
posted in: Montana
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Report: Hospitals justify tax-exempt status
Thursday, January 29, 2009
A report commissioned by the attorney general’s office concludes Montana’s 11 largest nonprofit hospitals are making up for their tax-exempt status through community benefit. The 11 hospitals have a total tax exemption of almost $60 million. In 2007, the year from which data was used for the study, the hospitals provided almost $120 million in community benefits, such as free or discounted health services, Medicaid losses, health education programs, research and contributions. Northern Montana Hospital in Havre gave 614 percent of its tax exemption, giving it the highest ratio of community benefit to tax exemption. On the low end, Holy Rosary Healthcare in Miles City gave 101 percent. The report was written by Lawrence White, research assistant professor at the University of Montana School of Publ ic and Communi ty Heal t h Sciences. (AP)
posted in: Montana
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Court rules for radiologist in hospital’s appeal
Tuesday, January 27, 2009
HELENA, Mont. (AP) - The Montana Supreme Court has affirmed the right of a Butte radiologist to continue practicing at St. James HealthCare in Butte.
The court in a ruling Tuesday upheld a June 2007 decision by Butte-Silver Bow District Judge Brad Newman. He ruled the hospital’s board of directors violated its bylaws by taking away Dr. Jesse Cole’s active privileges with the hospital in December 2006.
St. James filed suit against Cole in November 2006, accusing him of interfering with its negotiations with other doctors. This was after Cole lost his exclusive contract with the hospital for radiation services, because of complaints about his billing practices.
The lawsuit also alleges Cole threatened Dr. Anna Chacko, who was in negotiations to work for the hospital, and sent harassing e-mails to Chacko’s employers at Boston University.
posted in: Montana
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MSU prof to study end-of-life care on reservations
Friday, January 23, 2009
A Montana State University nursing professor has received a nearly $107,000 grant from the Lance Armstrong Foundation to better understand the needs of dying patients on the Blackfeet Reservation.
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posted in: Montana
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Flu confirmed in county
Thursday, January 15, 2009
The first cases of influenza virus have been confirmed in Lewis and Clark County.
Three people in the county have influenza A, the Lewis and Clark County Health Department announced
Thursday.
According to Kay Robertson, Lewis and Clark County Health Department public health nurse, all three people confirmed to have the flu were adults.
Robertson stressed that everyone, regardless of age, should take precautions against the virus. She said the best prevention for the flu is getting the flu vaccine, noting that the U.S. Centers for Disease Control recommend a yearly flu vaccine for everyone six months and older.
Robertson added that, unlike in some recent years when there have been shortages of the vaccine, the health department and all the clinics in the area have ample supply of the vaccine.
posted in: Montana
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