Cooperative Living September 2019 - 36

CMH: 'A Huge Bonus'
(continued from page 32)
tentatively scheduled to begin this summer.
In all, it's Mecklenburg County's largest
employer with nearly 850 employees,
including more than 700 full-time
equivalents. VCU Health CMH has added
more than 120 new employees since
affiliating with VCU Health.
JOINING FORCES WITH VCU
Recently elected chairman of the
VCU Health CMH board of directors
in 2019-2020, Lee credits the board and
CEO Scott Burnette for making a
" gut-wrenching decision " and taking
strategic action to salvage health care
in Southside Virginia.
" We pretty quickly came to the
conclusion, if our community hospital
was going to survive, then we had to
affiliate and align with a larger health
care organization, because smaller
community-owned hospitals were all
struggling and falling by the wayside
everywhere, " Lee says.
In 2012, then-board Chairman Wayne
Parrish asked Lee to chair the Affiliation
Committee, which identified and evaluated
potential partners for the South Hill
community hospital. The committee
considered opportunities with five large
health care organizations under several
conditions, including a requirement that
the successful partner would commit the
resources needed to build a new hospital.
While all the partners had merit,
VCU was the obvious choice, Lee says.
" There is always a healthy and
acceptable amount of doubt or skepticism
that accompanies a decision of that
magnitude, with so much on the line ...
and the affiliation decision was no
different. However, that uncertainty
dissipated quickly as we worked with their
team, and we are more convinced than ever
that we got this one right, " he adds. " VCU
Health has been trustworthy, transparent,
highly professional, cooperative, generous
and most of all, they care about our
community and are sensitive to its needs.
How does it get any better than that? "
The hospital has always served an
important role in acute care with an
emergency department that averages
approximately 22,000 visits per year. But
its role in the region as the destination for
health care services goes well beyond its
emergency department. In addition to the
new hospital and increasing number of
specialties offered and medical providers
who make rounds locally, the biggest postaffiliation
change revolves around the
hospital's ability to treat complex health
issues without having to transport patients
to urban providers.
That is by design and was a strong factor
in VCU Health's willingness to invest
From left, Ken Kurz, director
of marketing and development
at CMH; John C. Lee Jr.,
president and CEO of
Mecklenburg Electric
Cooperative and EMPOWER
Broadband, and chairman
of the VCU Health CMH board
of directors; Jeff Edwards,
president and CEO of
Southside Electric Cooperative;
and Scott Burnette, president
and CEO at CMH.
heavily in CMH.
" VCU Health is typically at 100-105
percent occupancy in Richmond, " Kurz
says. " Their goal, besides making
everybody healthier down here, is to keep
the people who should be treated here,
here. This hospital is good for us, but it's
also good for VCU, and it's really good
for the citizens of Southside Virginia
and northern North Carolina because
of what we're able to provide locally. "
KEEPING THE LIGHTS ON
The hospital is a member of
Southside Electric Cooperative (SEC),
headquartered in Crewe. MEC, based
in Chase City, serves a VCU Health CMH
satellite site in Clarksville.
2nd-floor Waiting Area
Dining Servery
" Southside Electric Cooperative and
Mecklenburg Electric Cooperative are
both great partners of ours, " Kurz says.
" Obviously, electric service is pretty
important to a hospital and these two
cooperatives work very hard at making
sure we have the kind of robust and
reliable electric service required by a
health care facility. They are also very
supportive of all our community efforts
here at the hospital. "
SEC President and CEO Jeff Edwards
says VCU Health CMH is one of the
cooperative's largest members and is
the only hospital the co-op serves. SEC's
base is about 93 percent residential, so
connecting the hospital to its distribution
system represented unique challenges.
" It is nice to have an electrical load
that is several megawatts running 24
hours a day, 365 days a year. Besides
being a good load for us from a financial
perspective, they've been great to work
with and accordingly, it's just been a good
partnership for everyone involved, "
Edwards says.
Labor, Delivery, Recovery, and Postpartum Room
34 | Cooperative Living | September 2019
Catheterization Room
And Lee points out the major parallel
between the two electric cooperatives and
VCU Health CMH: " Health care is a lot
like electricity in that everybody's got to
have it. " 
co-opliving.com
http://www.co-opliving.com
Cooperative Living September 2019

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Cooperative Living September 2019
