Transcription
Patrick Ahearn, CEO Community Medical Center
Welcome back. My name is Patrick Ahearn, Chief Executive Officer of Community Medical Center. Over the last few months, we’ve lived through difficult times with the COVID pandemic, but I’m happy to say that we finally see the flattening of the curve.
We’ve done a lot here at Community Medical Center to keep you safe, but one of my concerns at this point, is that people have avoided necessary health care, and I want to emphasize that it’s safe to come to Community Medical Center, and more importantly, people have put off their health care needs and really want you to take care of yourself, be mammographies, you need physical therapy, or you’re sick and you need to call 911. Don’t hesitate to do that. It’s important that we take care of each other, and you take care of your health.
So what have we done here at Community Medical Center to keep you in a safe environment? We limited the number of entrances. We did that for your safety, and those who work here. We take the temperatures of the visitors, patients, employees, and physicians. We’ve also done stringent cleaning of each and every unit throughout the institution. We’ve also implemented many policies and procedures to change the way we take care of people. For instance, if you’re coming in for same-day surgery, you come in through one location now. We’ve brought all the equipment to same-day surgery so you don’t travel throughout the building. You’ll notice smaller waiting rooms where we’ve taken chairs out.
When you come into the outpatient facilities, you’ll be asked to take your temperature. You’ll see staff wearing masks. And we’ve made appointments, instead of every 15 minutes, if that was the norm, now they are every half-hour. On the in-patient side, we do testing before you come into the facility – COVID testing – if you’re being admitted. So, what we do is we test you, and then we put you in a private room until we get the results.
You know, I want to switch subjects a little bit because as we talked about COVID and all the things we’ve done here, I also want to talk about the things that are going on here at the institution that are very exciting. If you come to the emergency room, you’ll see it’s under renovation. In addition to renovations in the community room, we’re also committed to rebuilding the facility. We have a master facility to renovate the entire hospital.
One of the things that’s very important is our commitment to bring services to our community. What you’ll see over the next few years is Community Medical Center hubs out in the community. The services that will bring to you are ones that we really don’t need to have you come to the institution for, so we want to bring it closer to you. Those will include: primary care physicians, it will include radiology, pathology, physical therapy, in addition to the renovations at the institution, we’ve also filed our application to be a teaching hospital, have residents here. It’s important for the future of health care, and our commitment to education as a system.
And I want to thank the community. We couldn’t have gotten through this difficult time without your support, the donations, the food, the cards, they mean so much to us and the staff. They’ve lifted our spirits. And one of the last things that I want to talk about is our employees. I’m proud of what they’ve done here, I’m proud of how they’ve taken care of everybody, and so what you see, when you walk through the door now is everybody’s wearing masks. What I want you to do when you come here, is I want you to look at their eyes. You’re going see the smile in their eyes, you’re going to see the caring in their eyes. There is a person and a face behind that mask, and they care for you, they want to make you well, they’re committed to you, and they’re professionals.
Thank you for choosing Community Medical Center. Welcome back.