In the first quarter of 2023, I’ve been thinking a lot about numbers – though not always the numbers you might expect.

We’ve spent a lot of time over the past few years talking about them: Numbers of COVID patients in our hospitals. Numbers of vaccinations given. Numbers that make up our operating margin, revenues, expenses and costs of travel labor.

These are all important, no doubt about it.

But I have been reflecting on some different numbers that I believe better depict St. Charles’ impact on Central Oregon and illustrate our mission in action.

To provide the care our communities need, it takes more than 4,500 caregivers working side-by-side on the frontlines and behind the scenes. While I can’t possibly list all contributions from every department, I wanted to share a few that stand out.

In 2022 ...  

• We provided almost 100,000 patient visits in our Emergency Departments at all four hospitals – that’s a new patient every 13 minutes
• We provided more than 80,000 respiratory therapy procedures – a 70% increase from two years ago
• Our ambulatory clinics welcomed nearly 440,000 visits by people seeking care across a wide variety of specialties
• Our Food Services teams served more than 1 million meals across all campuses. That equates to a line of cafeteria trays side-by-side stretching from Redmond to Portland and back again
• We activated the trauma team nearly 1,000 times last year – or an average of three times per day
• The Lab team completed 1.2 million tests
• Our Pharmacy filled more than 102,000 prescriptions, up 28% from the year before
• Our Urgent Care teams provided 48,000 patient visits – an increase of more than 9,000 over the previous year 
• The Palliative Care team helped 1,500 patients through more than 3,000 visits
• More than 2,200 babies were born in Bend and Madras 
• We created and processed almost 2.8 million pounds of dirty linen – that’s roughly the same weight as nine blue whales! 

When I think about these statistics, I know that excellent patient care and the many services that support it simply isn’t possible without our incredible employees, physicians, providers and volunteers.

I am enormously proud to support them and to lead this great organization.

Sincerely,
Steve

St. Charles Health System is proud to support and partner with organizations across Central Oregon through its Community Benefit program. 

One such organization is Rimrock Trails Treatment Services, which provides professional mental health counseling and substance abuse treatment programs. Established in Prineville in 1990, Rimrock Trails initially opened as the first residential substance abuse treatment center for youth in Central Oregon. In the years since, it has expanded to provide comprehensive behavioral health services to individuals, families and couples of all ages. 

With outpatient treatment centers in Prineville, Redmond and Bend, Rimrock Trails is dedicated to improving the lives of its clients and creating lasting change through evidenced-based treatment in a safe, judgment-free atmosphere. The organization’s mental health therapists are dual-certified as addiction counselors, allowing them to provide integrated treatment for co-occurring mental health and substance use disorders.

Having provided specialized treatment to more than 17,000 people since its inception, Rimrock Trails is an invaluable community resource whose services are needed now more than ever.

“We are seeing a tremendous increase in the utilization of our outpatient counseling services, anywhere between an 8% and 37% increase month to month,” said Executive Director Erica Fuller, citing the COVID-19 pandemic and increasing use of social media, particularly among young people, as primary factors. “Clients are definitely coming in with a lot of trauma, social disconnection and loneliness.”

St. Charles has partnered with Rimrock Trails frequently over the years, supporting projects that provide basic-need items and enrichment activities for teens in the residential center. The health system will also sponsor upcoming events such as Kiefer’s Magical Birthday Bash, a family-friendly fundraiser happening March 31 in Prineville and April 1 in Redmond that is open to the public. Created in memory of Kiefer Leutschaft, the annual event raises money for mental health awareness programs and scholarship funds to help supplement treatment costs for clients who may be struggling to pay for services.

If you’d like to support or volunteer with Rimrock Trails or learn more about their services and events, visit their website at www.rimrocktrails.org.

The St. Charles Rheumatology clinic in Bend first opened its doors in 2015, offering comprehensive care for people with conditions such as rheumatoid arthritis, gout, osteoporosis, psoriatic arthritis and lupus.

Now, there’s good news for patients in the northern reaches of Central Oregon: The health system has expanded rheumatology services into Redmond, where people there and in Prineville, Madras, Sisters and points beyond can receive the care they need closer to home.

The new Redmond clinic will be serviced by Dr. Andrew Shaffer, who joined the rheumatology team last August. He’s currently taking appointments on Tuesdays and plans to add more clinic days in the near future.

Central Oregon has hundreds of rheumatology patients, partly due to its popularity as a retirement area; around 16% of Bend’s population is over the age of 65, according to U.S. Census Bureau data. The Bend rheumatology clinic will remain open, and the expansion to Redmond comes at a good time, as Deschutes Rheumatology closed its doors at the end of January.

“We've seen a pretty big spike in volume because of that. I'm confident that we have the capacity to accommodate all those patients, though,” said St. Charles’ chief of Rheumatology, Dr. Heather Hansen, who ran the department on her own for about seven years. She was joined by physician’s assistant Tianna Welch in September 2021 and Shaffer in 2022.

Dovetailing with the Redmond expansion, a new outpatient infusion clinic also recently opened on the Bend hospital campus. Previously, rheumatology patients needing an infusion had to go to the St. Charles Cancer Center. That option will remain, but the new outpatient clinic offers a more affordable and convenient place for infusions. It’s also in the same building as the Bend rheumatology clinic at 2600 NE Neff Road.

There is a “higher degree of physician supervision than you would have in a lot of freestanding infusion rooms,” said Hansen, who is also the director of outpatient infusion. Patients needing neurology, G.I. and other non-oncology treatments will also be able to receive infusions in the outpatient clinic. 

“The proximity to their rheumatology physician is wonderful and allows us to collaborate on visits,” said Jonnie Becker, administrative director of Surgical Services and Medical Specialties. “Having our own space allows us to develop our team [and] work together with the immediate team in service of our patients.”

Nationwide, Hansen said there’s a growing demand for rheumatology services. Millions of people in the United States suffer from some form of rheumatic disease, and rheumatology is one of the top specialties experiencing a provider shortage, she said.

“It is an ever-increasing need,” Becker said. “Our medicine continues to evolve and change and grow, and we're helping people to improve the quality of their life as they age.”

Sharlet Rasmussen, a rehab therapy technician in Bend, is the kind of person who focuses on the present – the patient in front of her, the caregivers around her, the care they’re providing as a team.

Generally speaking, she’s not the type to spend a lot of time reflecting on the past. With her 50th anniversary at St. Charles arriving this week, however, the enormity of her tenure recently hit her out of the blue.

“I think back on 50 years and I just think, ‘Wow,’” she said. “It really didn’t feel like 50 years, because the time just flew by.”

Rasumussen’s hire date was March 14, 1973, when she started delivering food to patients at St. Charles’ former location “on the hill” in downtown Bend, near the intersection of Franklin Avenue and Lava Road. The hospital opened its current location in 1975, and soon after, Rasmussen took a job as a cashier in the cafeteria.

“Everyone said, ‘What are you moving out in the farmers’ fields for?’” she said. “There was really nothing out here but cow pasture.”

After 10 years with St. Charles, Rasmussen – whose family moved to Bend when she was 5 – started her career in patient care after she was hired as a therapy tech. Even 40 years later, it’s seeing her patients make progress in their rehab that is the most rewarding thing about her work.

She prides herself on being a strong advocate for her patients.

“I feel very protective of them because they’re why we’re here,” she said. “Patient care is the number one thing.”

Patients aren’t the only people she works with, of course. For Rasmussen, her time at St. Charles has been filled with wonderful fellow caregivers, both past and present. While many things have changed over the years, one thing that remains the same, she said, is “the tightness of the employees.”

On the Ortho/Neuro floor where she works, for example, she feels like everyone – Environmental Services, nurses and so on – is on the same team.

“That’s a good feeling,” she said. “I have absolutely fantastic co-workers.”

Rasmussen is also one of the few remaining St. Charles caregivers who worked with the organization’s famous founder, Sister Catherine, who she describes as “a phenomenal person” who was “dearly loved” by the employees.

“We would have parties at Sunriver and she would ride the bus and she was just a hoot. She was so darn funny,” she said. “She was so loving and kind, and she knew everyone by name. It meant a lot to work here.”

The opening of St. Charles’ new Wound Ostomy care clinic in Prineville means people in Crook County who need wound and ostomy services can get the care they need closer to home.

Located in the Prineville hospital, the clinic is open Monday through Friday, 8 a.m.-5 p.m. by appointment only. It is the health system’s third hospital-based, outpatient Wound Ostomy clinic in Central Oregon, joining locations in Bend and Madras, where planned expansions are designed to better serve Jefferson County, too.

For patients traveling to and from appointments multiple times per week, less travel can mean better health outcomes, said Bethany Klier, manager of Wound Ostomy for St. Charles.

"People shouldn’t have to commute 30 miles, 60 miles and even 100 miles to receive care. It is our priority to bring care closer to where our patients reside,” Klier said.

The experienced and board-certified clinicians in Wound Ostomy treat patients with problematic, chronic, or hard-to-treat conditions such as pressure ulcers, diabetic ulcers, surgical wounds, and arterial wounds. They also provide comprehensive ostomy care and management for patients with stomas, ostomies, from pre-op counseling and education to dietary help and support groups.

But more than just providing a medical service, the staff in Wound Ostomy hopes to be a source of support and community for their patients.

“We’ll partner with you to get optimal healing outcomes, but we don’t see it as just providing a service,” Klier said. “We create connections by listening, empathizing, educating, and supporting one another. We truly care about our patients and want to provide a safe healing environment for all.”

The planned Wound Ostomy expansion in Madras includes an additional exam room and more staffing to meet the demand that is higher than anticipated, Klier said.

“We’ve grown pretty consistently as the years have progressed, despite a lot of people not knowing who we are or what we do,” she said. “We weren’t expecting the amount of patient volume when we opened our Madras location, and we’ve found that we really hit a population that we didn’t even know existed or needed our care. It humbled all of us who’ve worked there. It’s obvious that the community needs us more than ever.”

If you think you could benefit from wound and ostomy care or would like more information about ostomy support groups, please contact your primary care provider for a referral. Visit our website to learn more about St. Charles’ wound and ostomy services.

Health care providers and educators are planning and preparing for the launch of the Three Sisters Rural Track Program Family Medicine Residency – the first graduate medical education residency primarily based in Central Oregon.

Officials from St. Charles Madras, St. Charles’ Madras Family Care Clinic, Mosaic Medical, Oregon Health & Science University (OHSU) and Indian Health Service (IHS) have met multiple times over the past few months to discuss details of the program, which is expected to bring six resident physicians to Jefferson County in 2025.

The group met recently in Madras for its third faculty development session, said program director Dr. Jinnell Lewis.

“We’re talking about the details of running a residency, how to teach residents and how to work with residents, plus we’re planning for recruitment, which happens this fall,” she said. “It takes a lot of work and collaboration to launch something like this and we’re deep into that process right now.”

Medical students will apply for residencies in September, and program officials will have less than two weeks to review applications and decide who to offer an interview, Lewis said. They hope to interview 90-100 applicants for six positions in the program’s first class.

That class will spend its first year at OHSU, then two years in Jefferson County. The Three Sisters program is unique because it offers three “continuity sites” in a rural area: Mosaic Medical’s Madras clinic, St. Charles’ Madras clinic and the Warm Springs Health & Wellness Center. Resident physicians will work at each of the three sites and will see their own panel of patients under the supervision of a teaching physician.

“With our three sites, we’re able to give residents an array of experiences, including a hospital-owned clinic, an FQHC in Mosaic and a federally run IHS clinic in Warm Springs,” Lewis said. “It’ll provide a well-rounded education in practice management, as well as exposure to different kinds of health care settings.”

The work has given Lewis a chance to meet and collaborate with a number of individuals and organizations in the area, she said.

“I’ve been to the Confederated Tribes of Warm Springs’ Tribal Council and met with Madras City Council and Jefferson County Commissioners, and everyone is supportive of this huge opportunity for our community,” she said.

The program will look to hire a new coordinator position soon, Lewis said. Resident physicians are expected to arrive in Jefferson County in August of 2025.

Hello St. Charles newsletter readers! I am taking over this month's column to let you know that the health system's Board of Directors, which I chair, is pleased to announce that Dr. Steve Gordon has accepted the position of president and CEO for the health system on a permanent basis. He has been serving as interim president and CEO since July.

In that time, he has launched a new service-line focused structure that groups and manages services that support a patient throughout their health care journey. Under his leadership, St. Charles realized improved financial performance for the second half of 2022 and is committed to returning to a positive operating margin by the end of 2023. Retaining highly experienced caregivers and working to recruit new permanent staff are among his top priorities.

Additionally, Steve is an experienced health care executive and former member of the St. Charles Board of Directors. A primary care and internal medicine physician by training, he has served in executive leadership roles for PeaceHealth in Vancouver, Wash., Providence Health and Services in Portland and Salem Health. He is a graduate of Harvard College, Harvard Medical School and Harvard Kennedy School of Government. 

I can tell you that the Board of Directors has been very appreciative of Steve's leadership over the past seven months, and we desired to have him become the permanent CEO. We are thrilled that he has accepted the position, and we look forward to a productive partnership with him for the benefit of the community and our patients.

The Board did not offer Steve the permanent position without input from others, however. Working with an external search firm, we conducted a survey along with small group and individual meetings with a variety of identified stakeholders to determine the attributes most desired in the next health system CEO. The top qualities identified by more than 1,600 St. Charles caregivers and community partners were:

• Compassion for patients and staff
• Experience as a direct health care provider
• Visibility and presence across all sites of care and in the communities St. Charles serves

Said Ann Rhoads, who chaired the Board's CEO search committee: “During this interim period, Steve has naturally embodied these attributes making him easily the top choice for the position. We heard repeatedly from the listening sessions that caregivers, physicians and community partners would be thrilled to see Steve in the role for the long term. We believe he is the best person to lead St. Charles into the future and that he will drive the system to provide excellence in care, service and organizational culture.”

I couldn't agree more. I’ll close by giving Steve the final word, as I believe it conveys the positive energy and servant’s spirit that he has brought to his role, and it makes me excited for the future of St. Charles under his guidance:

“I am energized to build on what we’ve learned so far from service line development in many areas of the organization,” he said. “Plenty of work still lies ahead, but we’re seeing results from focusing first on clinical excellence and a better experience for our patients, caregivers, physicians and providers. I have enjoyed getting to know this extraordinary organization in a new and deeper way in recent months. We simply have the best people who are committed to providing patients with exceptional care. I want to continue supporting them in that noble endeavor.”

Sincerely,
Jamie Orlikoff
Chairman, St. Charles Health System Board of Directors

St. Charles Cancer Center’s new breast surgeon, Dr. Caitlyn Truong, brings to Central Oregon a passion for breast health, fellowship training at Stanford University, and a comprehensive, compassionate approach to patient care.

Truong – who is also the new medical director of St. Charles’ breast cancer care program – comes to the health system from the Centura Health system in Colorado, where she practiced for the past nine years. Though initially trained as a general surgeon, she now specializes in a wide range of breast health care and treatments, ranging from benign conditions to breast cancer.

“Our breast cancer program is so fortunate to add Dr. Truong as our breast surgeon and medical director of breast cancer care,” said Dr. Linyee Chang, clinical division director of St. Charles Cancer Services. “We have already benefited from her thoughtful contributions to strategic development, and I am confident she will provide the leadership to elevate our breast cancer program.”

Truong has wanted to pursue a career in cancer treatment for most of her life, she said.

“I became interested in the field after one of my cousins passed away from cancer when we were kids,” she said. “From that moment on, I knew I wanted to do something in oncology.”

At first, she planned to go into pediatrics, but then she found her calling in surgery.

“I really liked the surgical aspect of (when) you see a problem, you’re able to act on it,” she said.

Born and raised in the Bay Area of California, Truong attended medical school at the University of California San Diego. During her general surgery residency at Loma Linda University School of Medicine, she mentored under a breast surgeon who inspired her to focus on breast surgery.

“I spent more time with breast patients and really fell in love with breast health and what we can afford to give them,” she said. “I'm trained as a general surgeon, but since I specialize, I don't do any other surgeries. Breast health and breast surgery is my passion.”

In Colorado, Truong helped build up the breast surgery program at several of Centura Health’s 15 campuses, increasing accessibility to breast care in the area. She strongly encourages shared decision-making between provider and patient, with an emphasis on promoting health, fitness and improved quality of life.

She also can’t wait to get outside and enjoy some of Central Oregon’s beautiful trail runs.

“I’m so excited to be here,” Truong said, “not only for the opportunity to live in such a vibrant place, but also to serve this community and to give people the compassionate care they need in what can be a worrisome time.”

A few stories about St. Charles caregivers going above and beyond to help people have made their way to me lately, and they serve as good reminders of why we do what we do.

These stories played out in three different towns in the area we serve – which is about the size of South Carolina, in case you weren’t aware.

They involved different types of caregivers – nurses, a surgeon, pharmacists, administrators, lab workers and so on. One of these situations involved a single caregiver, one involved a team and one required cooperation between St. Charles and multiple partner agencies.

In one case, a medical assistant on a break from work was running errands in town, discovered a person struggling and performed CPR until an ambulance arrived. She is credited with saving the person’s life.

In another, St. Charles caregivers moved swiftly and efficiently to help with a traumatic accident. They gathered necessary supplies, went to the scene of the incident and, working closely with emergency responders, provided life-saving care as quickly as possible.

In the third, a group of pharmacists became aware of a patient who was concerned about a barrier standing between her and an important medication. They worked together to help her overcome that barrier and filled her prescription the next day.

In a variety of situations, St. Charles caregivers came across a person who needed help. And in all three, our people rose to the occasion just like so many of our caregivers do day in and day out.

Quite simply, these stories have served as a reminder to me that, at its core, St. Charles is about much more than buildings and technology, policies and procedures.

St. Charles is about people.

It’s about people who need care, it’s about the people who provide that care, and it’s about the interaction between those two groups. Those interactions happen hundreds – maybe thousands – of times every single day at St. Charles, and they are overwhelmingly positive.

I am proud to lead an organization that puts people at the very center of everything we do.

Sincerely,
Steve

The end of the year is a good time to look back, celebrate our successes, recognize the challenges ahead and reflect on the journey of the past 12 months.

After COVID-19 dominated our activities at St. Charles in 2020 and 2021, 2022 was about accepting the virus as a part of normal life, incorporating it into the day-to-day care we provide and continuing to innovate and improve in areas across the health system.

When I think about what St. Charles has accomplished in 2022, I am enormously proud of our caregivers and physicians, our leadership and our organization as a whole. It takes incredible teamwork, laser focus and dedication to the communities we serve to push a regional health system forward in the midst of a pandemic and unprecedented financial challenges, and our team has done exactly that.

Here are just a few of the things we’ve done that come to mind:

• Early this year, we rolled out outpatient treatments for people with COVID-19, and our Urgent Care clinics are now federally designated Test to Treat sites where people at high risk of severe COVID-19 illness can get fast and easy access to therapeutics.
• We opened a new Infectious Disease clinic, which offers travel medicine consults to help keep Central Oregonians safe and healthy when they leave the country.
• We’ve expanded our Center for Women’s Health, adding three new physicians and improving access to reproductive health care for all women.
• We have established training programs that provide a path to a career in patient care for our caregivers in non-medical positions as well as people outside the organization looking to get into health care. These programs are helping us address our significant staffing shortages.
• We hired our first manager of caregiver inclusion and experience, who is dedicated to making sure St. Charles is a place where people feel like they belong. And for the second time in three years, we received national recognition for our work to welcome the LGBTQ+ community.
• Our Three Sisters Rural Track graduate medical education program in Madras – a partnership with OHSU – continues to develop largely behind the scenes, with an aim to bring doctors to Jefferson County in 2025.
• We’ve brought back in-person events, such as the Heaven Can Wait 5K walk/run in Redmond and the annual Hospice Auction in Prineville, as well as important community efforts such as Stop the Bleed training and our Living Beyond Breast Cancer series.
• We’ve implemented a system-wide focus on our financial recovery efforts, which has helped our bottom line in recent months. At the same time, we are significantly restructuring how we work into service lines to improve patient care, patient outcomes and patient satisfaction, and we have launched what we’re calling our One St. Charles strategy to bring our organization closer together and guide us into the future.

This is, of course, just some of the good work happening across the health system – work that will continue in 2023 and beyond.

Thank you for your support of St. Charles.

Sincerely,
Steve