Cheyanne Holland has been CFO of Randolph, Vt.-based Gifford Health Care since Aug. 19, and in that time, one of her top priorities has been to recruit and retain clinical and non-clinical employees in a rural healthcare setting.
"I would say that's one of the biggest challenges because that impacts both our ability to provide access to the community as well as the cost of providing the service," Ms. Holland told Becker's.
Gifford Health Care is a federally qualified health center that comprises a critical access hospital, six primary care clinics, a birthing center, specialty clinics and senior living facilities. It is one of only two FQHC organizations in the country that owns and operates a critical access hospital.
Ms. Holland served in an interim capacity at Gifford for a short time last fall before returning again this August. Ms. Holland said she treasures her time with the organization, because "when you think about rural health … it's the heart of the small town." Now, she's encouraging others to give rural healthcare careers a chance too.
"You're treating your family, your friends, your neighbors," she said. "You can really see the difference that you make in other people's lives."
From a financial standpoint, Ms. Holland said that Gifford is coming off of a negative margin at the end of the last fiscal year that carried into this fiscal year. While the organization was able to cut its losses in half, it continues to deal with wage and contract labor pressures.
To combat this, Ms. Holland says the organization has been working to improve its recruitment process, care access and overall efficiency, while leveraging technology.
Another area Gifford is exploring is outsourcing non-core services, she said. To that end, and given staff limitations, she said Gifford looks for certain tasks "we can peel off to make things more efficient."
In January, Gifford Health Care outsourced all of its coding and billing, which put the recruitment risk on another company and allowed Gifford to create accountability standards on performance expectations.
Gifford also puts an emphasis on partnerships with local state universities for more outreach and clinical rotations, specifically for specialties like family medicine.
"Part of the battle is these students have already chosen a rural place to get their education, so they've already been introduced to that," she said. "You've won part of the battle, but then there's lots of different opportunities that exist. Do you want to be part of a system? Do you want to be part of a small organization where you may have more control or you may have the ability to be innovative and be able to do what you need to do to meet the needs of your patients. We try to sell that, the simpleness."
Looking to the future, Ms. Holland said that Gifford will continue working on its margin with a focus on access, workforce, efficiency and strategic partnerships. Gifford, she added, is "[r]eally looking at where we can come together, either [with] other hospitals or other providers in the community to keep costs down, leverage a little bit better or to share resources," she said.