Continued Dedicated Service to Our Community The aroma of oil was quite evident this past couple weeks, with the resurfacing of Main Street, followed by our own parking lot. Nice to have both nearly finished with a tidy new look (and the smell evaporating some). It feels a bit like we are preparing, along with the school board, for the return of fall and the substantial uptick in traffic following the doldrums of summer. Summer did not yield a slowdown for MCH, as we have r

Continued Dedicated Service to Our Community As midsummer is suddenly behind us, I hope most of you have experienced or soon to experience that long awaited summer vacation. It’s hard to believe that fall semester football practices will soon be teasing our young folks with heat stroke and body aches. But there still is time for another lake or beach trip, so book it if you can. We’ll certainly remember this as a green summer of never-ending lawn mowing. Coming here from Te

Continued Dedicated Service to Our Community America 250…Quite the ring to it, huh? We must stay proud of it so that its preservation is secure for the next two and a half centuries! Its stature as the best country in the world is undeniable to most of us in the States, but its vulnerability still feels quite real. The next ten years will reveal a lot…let’s aspire for and work towards nothing changing the great things about our Country!! (Forgive me – it just feels like the r

Continued Dedicated Service to Our Community So…you will find two two-week periods of activity below…and I thank you for the extended vacation that caused this carry over. The numbers reflect a softening summer spell, but not too bad of a dip. Any pay period with a Holiday included will result in a prorated volume of budgeted outpatient activity. Therefore, we are not too alarmed by the higher percentage of red values. The good news is that there are looming grant dollars (

Continued Dedicated Service to Our Community This year is suddenly creeping towards its midpoint. And as such I can truly attest to it being the most interesting of times: 1.) AI is accelerating its influence on healthcare at near undiscernible speed, 2.) an aligned charge to disruptively innovate how healthcare operates is being cast out from Washington DC (and Topeka) at decibels higher than ever heard before, 3.) the RHTP funding opportunities for rural healthcare have at

Continued Dedicated Service to Our Community We are celebrating Hospital Week this week, and it has been fun to see many of you letting your hair down and joining in on the “Dress the Decade Day”, as each progressive day has moved us through the fifties to the nineties. A shout out to the Team Building Committee, who once again brainstormed a new theme, new treats, and new ways of recognizing each of you for being stellar partners in what we strive to do each day: serve our p

Continued Dedicated Service to Our Community I hope all of you survived a no surprise tax-day season, although some of us may have just kicked the surprise downstream in filing the old extension. I for one have yet to find out if a surprise awaits me. I write this on May Day, so another month is again behind us. This pay-period included annual celebrations for two of our very important service lines: Laboratory and Health Information Management. I extend my thanks to these tw

Continued Dedicated Service to Our Community March Madness is behind us…congrats to Deb Benning for securing the local pool… and away we go into the busy cattle moving month of April, as the green grass is already looking lush all over our Flint Hills, along with some continuous burning. We are showing three solid first quarter months behind us, even as April has softened a bit, volume wise. We just got word late this week that statewide, the release of multiple awaiting RH

Continued Dedicated Service to Our Community It does feel like Spring is well under way in Central Kansas! If one last ice storm forces me to scrape a windshield for the first time this winter (truly would be the first!), then I will be ok with it…not happy about it, but OK, because a blast won’t last long at this point. Now if we could just get some rain…and not so much to flood our parks this year. I want to give a departmental SHOUT OUT this week. And the winner goes to

Continued Dedicated Service to Our Community Motivated by the Rural Health Transformation Plan’s targeted commitment to funds for rural healthcare, announced by President Trump over six months ago, KDHE has at last through CMS began issuing the guidelines for applying for funding on the first three of 24 programs earmarking direct grant dollars to healthcare organizations across Kansas. In exchange for a check, organizations must demonstrate a plan for producing measurable re

Continued Dedicated Service to Our Community Month 2 of 2026 is now already behind us. What an eventful finish to its end, and we can sure be grateful (for now) that we are still seeing our surroundings fully intact and undisturbed, except for the desired rainfall. Middle East communities abroad aren’t so lucky. I am pleased to have updated the tables below to reflect new 2026 targets for the various service lines and stats that we show you regularly. I am also pleased to s

Continued Dedicated Service to Our Community Once in a while you can really feel that your “work” works out! We all need to sense those experiences of satisfaction following identified results of participating in a work effort, or we will probably soon gravitate to working elsewhere – that is just part of our human nature. This month started off with two such results, that will truly make a difference for our hospital moving forward. After three months of futility seeking a

Continued Dedicated Service to Our Community Already into month two of 2026! Our world is just so crammed full of constant data flowing all around us, that I am convinced there is too little pause in our days, that time is truly moving faster! And no end in sight to less data. Guess that means we are all going to grow to be AI dependent in order to help us process it all – that’s a bit scary. As we dissect the close of 2025 and compare it to the ultimate close of 2024, we h

Continued Dedicated Service to Our Community I prepared the report for period ending 1-3-2026, but I can’t see that I sent it. So here it is, if you are ok with older news. Welcome to 2026, ready or not! On the 29 th of December, it was announced that the State of Kansas was formally awarded $222 million of federal dollars over the next five years for the benefit of those delivering rural healthcare, AND secondly, a very pricey change in how the 340B program was going to be

Continued Dedicated Service to Our Community As we brace for our first big winter storm, we can hope that Evergy keeps the lights on…hopefully not the same worry that some bigger cities in this storm’s pathway are wrestling with. MCH will be here no matter what, as our backup generator is well primed and tested. Januarys are always extremely busy at the back end of our business, as the accurate closing out of the prior year is critical, as is the creation of a new budget fo

Continued Dedicated Service to Our Community With only a week left in 2025, we can safely say that the looming wind-down period over the next busy family times leaves us mostly just a few moments to think of the new year ahead. The winter solstice was last Sunday, so a good piece of news is that the days are now back on the getting longer cycle. We’re also being privileged this year with a very mild few days, weather wise, so our thinking ahead can be done in relative comfort

Continued Dedicated Service to Our Community With the Holidays thick in our midst, we are readily reminded how busy our 21 st century December lives have gotten. Once again, it is all somewhat exhilarating and mind twisting at the same time. At MCH we try to fit in as much work as we can into fewer days, as time off is essential to accommodate the extra demands of the season. This year at MCH we are tasked with higher inpatient demands than normal, while our outpatient servi

Continued Dedicated Service to Our Community There is much for a busy hospital to be thankful for – number one, the great providers and staff we have that are striving to meet all the elevated demands – brought on by the bugs of late fall / early winter. We are thankful for the spirit of brotherhood in our small town and for the positive attitudes that mute the naysayers. We are thankful for technology and medicines that speed up recoveries, and we owe a lot of gratitude to t

Continued Dedicated Service to Our Community Who of you knew that yesterday was National Indian Pudding Day? Seeing no hands raised, I know some of you have heard that the last couple of weeks have honored our Radiology Techs, our Physician Assistants, and our Advanced Practice Nurses… all of whom play such important roles on our Healthcare Team! So, thank you very much: Corky, Deanna, Kirstin, Bailey, Tristyn, Isabel, Teresa, Deb, Carol, Lisa, Katie, Haley, and David – you a

Continued Dedicated Service to Our Community Another month is today passing us by, and with such, may your treats exceed your tricks. We have had a month of government shut down, but quite a busy month here at MCH, as we have had our highest month overnight census of this year, and very likely the highest revenue month of the year…all before an official first freeze! We enjoyed the visit of our first of two new possible physicians, two days ago, and we thank Dr. Kayden Cart