Spencer Hospital: "Healthier Together"

Hospital leaders and healthcare professionals across the country continue to expand their focus from caring for people with illnesses to include keeping people well through population health initiatives. Locally, Spencer Hospital strives to provide community education on good health and wellness services focused on preventative care. To reflect that emphasis, the hospital has updated its marketing tagline to “Spencer Hospital – Healthier Together.”

“Good health is a journey that starts with prevention,” commented Susan Zulk, Vice President of Marketing and Fund Development for Spencer Hospital. “As individuals, we have the power to make choices each day that impact our health. The knowledge and guidance of our healthcare professionals can help lead us to making those healthy decisions and, if a health issue does arise, through their expertise they can diagnose and treat those concerns.”

Bill Bumgarner, Spencer Hospital president, added: “For the past several years, hospital leadership has advanced population health initiatives to help people in our region live healthier lives while at the same time, enhance acute medical services to be able to provide treatment when needed,” Bumgarner said. “It’s a major paradigm shift in the healthcare industry nationwide. It’s increasingly clear that when individuals take personal ownership of their health decisions, it can lead to better outcomes, lower healthcare costs overall and, as our new tagline says, we can be ‘Healthier Together.’”

Zulk mentioned the hospital has numerous wellness initiatives in place, including a variety of community educational offerings and health screenings available to encourage people to know their health status and identify concerns before symptoms occur. “Weekly our community health nurses offer a free blood pressure screening clinic,” she said. “We also offer several low-cost screening programs including metabolic syndrome screenings, our Planet Heart programs which include a heart screening and a stroke screening.”

“Also, the hospital staff is working with several area businesses to take that screening information a few steps further through our LiveWell programs,” Zulk added. “Through LiveWell, we work with businesses to identify their health priorities and how to best address them. Often this involves providing health screenings for their work force and for those individuals who are identified with health concerns, we provide educational programming or at times, personal training. Some companies identify their biggest health priority as ergonomic issues which can lead to employee injuries or long-term muscular skeletal issues such as carpal tunnel concerns. Then, our physical therapists will engage with the company to provide work station analysis, ergonomic training or even Active Release Technique which is a specialized technique for addressing overused muscles.”

Bumgarner added that in recent years the hospital has invested in a care transitions program which is designed to ease the transition for patients discharged from the hospital to help them continue their recovery at home, thus reducing readmissions to the hospital. Programs like diabetic education are designed to work with individual patients to help them better manage their chronic illness.

“Significant progress has been made in recent years to increase access to healthcare in the United States,” said Bumgarner.  “That improved access has been critical to support efforts within the healthcare industry to advance the population health activities necessary to better manage the cost of care in our country.  Improved health outcomes and cost efficiency will continue to be vital to maintain the quality and breadth of healthcare services we have come to value in Spencer and communities throughout the nation.”