“If my son had cancer or was diagnosed with diabetes, I’d be doing all the research I can to find out what resources are out there, how I can help him, how I can be supportive of him. I’m not a doctor, but you can still support a loved one going through cancer/chemo – same thing with mental illness … there are ways to support them. Learning about it and asking for help is the first step. We should not ever feel ashamed or embarrassed about it. Your brain can get sick just as easy as any other part of your body … it’s OK to not be OK.”

- Kelly, Transfer Center, St. Charles Bend, explaining the event she's organizing about the stigma around mental illness. Stomp Out Stigma will be held on Sept. 15 at Sky View Middle School

Lenny Probert is known as "quite the character" at the St. Charles Family Care Clinic in Sisters. During a recent wellness visit, he rolled in for his 2 p.m. appointment with sunglasses on and announced to the registration clerk, "I just woke up." He has a bold sense of humor, filled with self-deprecating honesty. He also has stage IV kidney disease and will likely soon need dialysis treatment.

"I'm feeling like I'm getting real old, real quick,” he said. “It's one thing after another."

As a patient with multiple health issues and a limited ability to care for himself, Probert works with a team of care providers as part of St. Charles Family Care in Sisters, which is a Patient-Centered Primary Care Home (PCPCH). The PCPCH is a collaborative care model that focuses on coordinating patient care among a team. A patient's health care team might include a behavioral health consultant, a community health educator, a nurse care coordinator and a clinical pharmacist who work together with the provider as an integrated support network. This allows issues to be addressed that fall outside of the typical spectrum of clinical care.

"We do a lot of problem solving," said Heather Lasecki, a primary care consultant and member of Probert's care team. "It's teamwork, working as a tribe and thinking outside the box and outside the clinic." Probert’s care team also includes Community Health Educator Chloe Fief and Nurse Care Coordinator Gwen Hanson.

Probert’s care plan extends beyond the traditional doctor visit. During one of his recent check-ins with Lasecki, Probert mentioned his fear of dialysis and asked if she might go with him to see what dialysis is like. So, Lasecki pulled together the care team and they arranged a field trip to the dialysis center.

"It could be a while before he needs dialysis and we didn't want to scare him, but we wanted him to know what was ahead," said Lasecki. "I could have spoken to him about it, but it wouldn't have been as real. He needed to see it with people he trusts."

They toured the center and talked frankly about his health and how it will determine what the future looks like.

"It just shocked me," said Probert. "The sight of the beds and machines and people laying around.

They explained to me what was going on and how I was feeling and how it was normal. It was a good experience."

Lasecki said she’s confident Probert will follow his treatment regimen, which will “hopefully work to prolong the need for dialysis.”

Probert also has a monthly appointment for the team to organize his medications into daily doses.

"I've got so many, I don't trust myself," Probert said.

Contact with the team is frequent—in fact, when Probert recently missed an appointment and wasn’t answering his phone, members of his care team went out to look for him and were there at his house when he returned from a walk.

"They're so good to me," said Probert. "They're on my side. They're real people. That's why I like them so much.”

The Oregon Health Authority recently audited the Sisters clinic to assess its PCPCH status and awarded it enough points to earn a Tier 4 (out of 5) recognition. The recognition criteria includes access to care, accountability, whole-person care, continuity, coordination and integration and person-and family-centered care.

 “They care. They listen,” said Probert. “I think they're all pretty special.”

A community table is meant for sharing – to sit together, share a meal and have a conversation.

Thom Pastor, manager of Food Services at St. Charles Madras and Prineville, saw a need for something that would give the same feeling of community to our Madras hospital cafeteria. He began researching the idea of a community table and put the word out to find a local woodworker who could bring it to life. Enter Ben Anderson, Jacob Struck and the students in the Career, Technical and Engineering (CTE) program at Madras High School.

Anderson and Struck (both MHS alumni) are the metals and construction instructors, respectively, in the CTE program. They began working with the students on the initial design of the table, and Anderson visited the local scrap yard to find the materials. He was excited to reclaim some wood boards from an old train car and metal wheels from a rusted utility cart.

Given their regular class load, the students were only able to work on the project one or two days a week, but in a little more than a year, they created a work of art.

The finished table and benches are structurally sound and ADA compliant. The metal pieces that represent the St. Charles logo and Madras High School mascot were cut by the students themselves. They even applied a thick lacquer over the top that will stand up to the cleaning agents used in the hospital.

We’re honored to display their craftsmanship in our hospital. We hope to share it with our community for generations.

"One of my goals is to have visited as many countries as possible. I’m hoping 10 … and then another goal was to become a U.S. citizen. Big goals…you know, I'm 40 this year so I want to do as much as I possibly can, like make it a real epic year."

- Aaron, supervisor/chef at St. Charles Redmond and a Canadian native who became a U.S. citizen in March

Community invited to attend May 16 St. Charles Family Care in La Pine grand opening

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
May 4, 2018

LA PINE, Ore. — St. Charles Health System is celebrating the completion of its newest family care clinic at 51781 Huntington Road in La Pine with a ribbon cutting ceremony and open house event May 16 at 5 p.m.

St. Charles Family Care in La Pine will serve the community of La Pine and nearby underserved communities, including Sunriver, Gilchrist, Crescent, Chiloquin, Chemult, Christmas Valley, Silver Lake and Fort Rock. Along with expanding services, the clinic will provide a medical home for the region that coordinates care throughout St. Charles Health System with the central point of access — primary care physicians — close to home.

“We’re so excited to celebrate the grand opening of our new clinic,” said John Weinsheim, president of St. Charles Medical Group. “This clinic, which will provide primary care, Immediate Care, radiology, lab, occupational and specialty services, will be a medical home to south county residents.”

St. Charles Foundation is celebrating raising $1.2 million to help fund the project. The Foundation received cash and pledges from individuals, foundations and businesses who want to see expanded health care in the south county area.

“With the help of our dedicated team of volunteers and the support of the Central Oregon community, we’re making this much-needed clinic a reality,” said Corinne Martinez, capital campaign co-chair. “There are still naming opportunities and bricks available to commemorate this milestone in our community.”

There will be limited parking available at the site for the grand opening celebration. Attendees are encouraged to take a shuttle from the La Pine Senior Activity Center at 16450 Victory Way. Shuttle rides will begin at 4:45 p.m. The event will begin with guest speakers, followed by a ribbon cutting and open house.

About St. Charles Health System

St. Charles Health System, Inc., headquartered in Bend, Ore., owns and operates St. Charles Bend, Madras, Prineville and Redmond. It also owns family care clinics in Bend, Madras, Prineville, Redmond and Sisters. St. Charles is a private, not-for-profit Oregon corporation and is the largest employer in Central Oregon with more than 3,800 caregivers. In addition, there are more than 350 active medical staff members and nearly 200 visiting medical staff members who partner with the health system to provide a wide range of care and service to our communities.

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"There are so many variables in patient care. You can’t have everything automatic. We do rely on the caregivers to turn lights off if they aren’t needed. On the floors, at 9 p.m., when visiting hours are over the light levels dim down. It’s bed time and people are winding down ... We have to keep the building pretty well-lit for safety reasons and security. But we do what we can."

- Al, electrical systems coordinator, on how St. Charles works to reduce light pollution

"You know when you walk into something like that it’s, you just have to let everything go, you know, and like you’re receiving and giving at the same time ... I always feel that when I go in - you’re giving something but you’re also receiving something back from them ... So when it comes out, it’s all one beautiful expression of love and caring. That’s what this place is, you know, I want it to be like that forever …"

-Bill, St. Charles Bend EKG Technician, on playing for our patients and their families

Sister Catherine (St. Charles CEO from 1969-1989) didn't make a lot of fans when she first started talking about building a new medical center on the east edge of Bend. In June 1969, she returned to St. Charles Memorial Hospital after nearly 20 years working as a nurse for her order in Indiana. The ink on her administrator's credentials had barely dried and already she was pushing for a fundamental change. 

"When I even mentioned the idea, they thought I was out of it," Hellmann said. "The Sisters of St. Joseph ... They could no way afford a new hospital. The community didn't think we needed one."

In the next six years, however, the spirited nun would win over the doubters with her vision of a modern medical center in the high desert. Faith and a newly-formed team would help her create an organization that would ensure St. Charles' continued growth in the decades to come. 

The St. Charles Memorial Hospital Hellmann left in 1951 was brand-new. A 38-bed wing had been added in 1958. But the community's growth was relentless even then. By 1969, crowding was a problem again. The medical staff and Sister Andrea, acting administrator before Hellmann arrived, had started looking at options. The Sisters of St. Joseph governing board wanted to expand the five-acre Hospital Hill site. Hellmann discerned quickly that would not meet the community's needs, and the board agreed to an independent study. In the meantime, the existing building was remodeled, expanding the hospital to 99 beds in 1971.

Planning for the new hospital began in earnest in 1970. The consultants came back with a proposal for a hospital on the east side of Bend. A facility to serve the 64,000 people living in the area, as well as to accommodate population growth, would cost $12 million. Neither the Mother House of the Sisters of St. Joseph nor the Baker Diocese could afford it. The community was dubious as well, but as in 1948, it rallied behind its hospital.

"They came to me and said, 'Sister, we decided we want our medical center,' but they said 'nowhere on God's earth will we get $12 million,'" Hellmann recalled. "I said last year, 1969, we made the first step on the moon ... are you committed to making the first step ... they couldn't say no to taking the first step."

In 1971, representatives of the community, the medical staff and the Sisters of St. Joseph established St. Charles Memorial Hospital, Inc., later changed to St. Charles Medical Center, Inc., a non-profit corporation. Hellmann became president and chief executive officer. Early in 1972, the Sisters of St. Joseph of Tipton, Indiana, turned over $3 million in assets and buildings it had accrued in its 54-year presence in Bend. That same year, the City of Bend lent its bonding authority to qualify the project for tax-exempt revenue bonds.

In the meantime, Sister Catherine had fallen in love with 68-acres of juniper trees and cow pasture east of Pilot Butte. A few farm houses dotted the area then; town ended on the east side of the butte. That worried some and offended a few.

"There were implications particularly moving out here, that we were leaving town. We were out by Harney County somewhere, because there was nobody out here at that time," recalled Roger Highland, then vice president of fiscal services.

But land was cheap relative to land in the middle of town and the location tugged at Hellmann since the first time she laid eyes on Central Oregon.

"I could just see the patients looking out and seeing those beautiful mountains," she recalled. 

On a cold Sunday morning, Sept. 21, 1975, those patients got their first look at Sister Catherine's views and at the newly christened St. Charles Medical Center. It was an all-hands event. Fifty-seven patients were moved one-by-one from St. Charles Memorial Hospital on the hill. A doctor, a nurse, two ambulance crew members and a hospital guild volunteer accompanied each patient. Two-day-old Jason V. of Prineville was the last child born at the old hospital and the first patient moved. That same morning, Calvin M. of Bend became the first child born at the new hospital. By noon, several patients had been treated in the emergency room and two had undergone surgery. The new medical center had 160,000 square feet on four and a half floors. It had 164 patient beds, and the design provided for expansion to 500 beds, according to Hellmann and to a 1972 document. 

Though others credit Sister Catherine's vision, she gave much of the credit to the people of Central Oregon.

"I saw much more community involvement at this hospital that at any other hospital I ever worked at," Hellmann said. "The people of that community were so open to new ideas. I was kind of like a bird out of a cage there."

Today a hotel stands on the rocky knoll across from St. Francis Catholic Church in downtown Bend.

The site stood bare for more than two decades before the hotel opened in 1998. A concrete stairway climbing from Lava Street led to a gravel-strewn knoll. A few remnants of a concrete foundation were the only hints of the past.

Yet people of Bend—old-timers and even recent arrivals—know the site as Hospital Hill. The legacy of St. Charles Hospital and the Sisters of St. Joseph is indelibly etched on the community. For more than a half century—from 1922 to 1975, the sisters operated hospitals on the site. Children born on Hospital Hill grew to give birth to children of their own there.

In 1919, however, the handful of sisters who had taken over the small hospital along Mirror Pond from Drs. Urling Coe and Barnard Ferrell were not thinking about legacies. Their immediate concern was space.

Bend’s population had surged from 523 in 1910 to more than 5,400 by 1920. This boom was fueled by the construction of the massive Brooks-Scanlon and the Shevlin-Hixon lumber mills in 1915. The town had outgrown the hospital.

Father Luke Sheehan, the parish priest at St. Francis of Assisi Catholic Church, purchased five acres across from the church for $1,100 and donated it to the sisters for a hospital. Local contractor E.P. Brosterhous agreed to build the hospital for $29,850. The Mother House in Indiana contributed $19,639 and the sisters paid the balance in seven installments.

Bishop Joseph McGrath and Fathers Luke Sheehan and Gabriel Harrington blessed each room in the building.

The new hospital’s name honored Bishop Charles O’Reilly of the Baker Diocese who had been instrumental in bringing them to Oregon. Gravely ill, he had stepped down from his post and would die a year later. Secondly, it honors the hospital’s patron saint, St. Charles Borromeo. A 16^th century archbishop of Milan, St. Charles was known for his work to help the sick during Europe’s great plague.

Sister Mary Martina was the superior at the time of the move. Sister Mary Agatha was named superior a month later. Then in 1935, Sister Blanche Ress, one of the pioneer sisters who arrived in 1917, became the superior. She would hold that position for 17 years.

The new facility was a vast improvement on the wood-frame building on Bend’s Mirror Pond. Yet, it was Spartan. The sisters slept in the unfinished elevator pit so they could be near their patients. If a patient needed something, he simply banged on the door. By 1923, the diocese built a three-room cottage next to the hospital. The next year brought the construction of a dormitory for them. Bend residents donated $500 to install an electric elevator in 1924.

Though the new hospital saw a small profit in its first year, the sisters lived frugally even by the standards of the day. They tended a garden to help feed themselves. Those not on nursing duty did the hospital’s laundry or cleaned up. Yet, each morning they taught catechism at St. Francis of Assisi after mass.

Bend’s rapid growth soon overwhelmed the 30-bed hospital. A new wing was built in 1934 that added 15 new beds, 10 bassinets, an X-ray department and a chapel.

In 1942, the U.S. Army started developing Camp Abbot on the site of present-day Sunriver Resort. It was a training facility for engineers. Between 1943 and 1944 an estimated 10,000 soldiers would be stationed there.

Needing a place for its sick and injured, the Army built a 25-bed wooden annex at St. Charles Hospital called Prague Hall. The sisters cared for the soldiers. After the war, the government sold the annex to the hospital for $6,000, increasing its bed capacity to 60.

The community’s growth drove expansion on Hospital Hill for the next 30 years, with a completely new hospital in 1951 and additions in 1958 and 1971. When St. Charles moved from the hill in 1975, it had 99 patient rooms and had outgrown the plot of land Father Sheehan provided. The property was sold and the buildings were demolished in 1978. The iron and concrete was gone. The legacy and the name Hospital Hill remain.

Crowded, outdated and struggling, St. Charles Hospital had appealed to the community for help. The evening of March 10, 1948, community leaders responded en masse.

“They had all the churches, all the organizations—about 150 to 200 people up at the old Pilot Butte Inn,” recalled Lowell Jensen a long-time St. Charles board member.

On the table was whether to build a new hospital or add to the existing one and how to pay for either. The Sisters of St. Joseph couldn’t afford a new one at an estimated cost of $1 million. In 1946, they had tried unsuccessfully to sell it to another religious order because of financial troubles. It was up to the citizens of Bend to help what many had begun to regard as “their” hospital. What happened in the following months remains an example of what ordinary citizens could accomplish in a small town.

“The (sisters) were working for free and never really got enough money to go and build anything, so we’d have to go out and raise the money. With that story, it wasn’t hard. The community has always been part of the hospital and still is,” said Pat Metke, another former [Missing copy…(board member?)]

The hospital had run on a meager budget since the sisters assumed operations in 1918. When people couldn’t pay their bills, the sisters would accept farm goods in payment. Some bills were simply forgiven, according to Jensen and Metke, something that holds true even today.

By 1946, crowding had become a problem even with the 25-bed military annex the government had sold the sisters. Bend was surging toward 12,000 people and in 1946 the 60-bed hospital admitted 2,500 patients. That number would hit 3,113 by 1949. In addition, the heating, water and lighting in the old brick building were insufficient.

Sister Blanche, the hospital’s superior, first sought the city’s help. She then asked the Bend Chamber of Commerce to step in. That group made building a new hospital its priority and called the Pilot Butte Inn meeting. From this sprang a group that met each morning to plan strategy. Bend had qualified for aid under the federal Hill-Burton Act of 1946, which provided money to modernize hospitals neglected during the Depression and war.

Robert W. Sawyer, editor and owner of the Bend Bulletin, asked Hardy Myers of the Shevlin-Hixon Company and Morris Hitchcock, owner of Wholesale Bend hardware, to go over the hospital’s finances.

“About the third morning (Myers) hit the table and said ‘by God, I don’t know how that woman has kept the doors open,’” Jensen said, adding delinquent bills were one of the problems. “He said it’s a lot of the people right down here on Wall Street that owe her the money and she can’t collect it from them.”

Myers and Hitchcock collected delinquent payments and suggested a board be formed to handle the hospital’s finances.

“Well, they presented that to Sister Blanche and she was delighted to no end. She said ‘Now we can do what we were sent out here to do: nurse the sick,’” Jensen said.

The Central Oregon Hospitals Foundation formed in April 1948 to oversee the hospital’s finances and to spearhead construction. Sawyer was president and Carl A. Johnson was chairman of the fund-raising campaign. They predicted they could raise the needed money in two weeks, Jensen said. Initially fund-raising was brisk. In addition, the group learned the Sisters of St. Joseph could borrow more than $200,000 toward the project. Then progress stalled, and for several months they were $40,000 short of their goal.

“John Wetle came to our meeting one morning and said ‘I raised the $40,000 last night. I got eight fellows to give $5,000 apiece and take a note from the sisters,’” said Jensen. The men later donated the money.

That fall, the Oregon State Board of Health approved a $309,000 grant of Hill-Burton Act money. Combined with the $344,000 the community raised and about $250,000 the sisters borrowed, the money was enough to build the new St. Charles Memorial Hospital.

On Feb, 1950, the Bend High School band led the community through the slushy streets of downtown to Hospital Hill on Franklin Avenue. The new hospital would be built next to the old brick one on the same site. In the ground-breaking ceremony, Sawyer spoke of when St. Charles would be a regional medical center.

“Over 1,900 persons have contributed to this hospital project. There have been large gifts and small and many in between. Whatever the size, every donor will look up at the building that will stand here and take equal pride that he had a part in it,” Sawyer said.

The new hospital was completed the spring of 1951 and dedicated on a stormy May 12, 1951. Sister Blanche spoke after Sawyer cut the ribbon.

“This ribbon will not be needed, for the doors of St. Charles shall never be locked against anyone in need of services, regardless of rank, color or creed,” Sister Blanche said.