medical
collaborative care
collaboration means
Sherrilyn Lorenz, nurse practitioner, examines one of the residents at Good Samaritan’s Bonell Community.
healthier, happier seniors By Heidi Kerr-Schlaefer
Sometimes providing the best possible healthcare means collaboration and cooperation, and that is exactly what is happening in Greeley.
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The residents of Good Samaritan Society’s Bonell Community have a lot of people looking out for them, and now they have one more, thanks to a new relationship between Bonell and Banner Health. Sherrilyn Lorenz, a family nurse practitioner and employee of Banner Health Clinic specializing in Internal Medicine, has been working full time at Bonell since June. Several things prompted this unusual arrangement, but the most important was a desire to lower readmission rates from Bonell to North Colorado Medical Center. Traditionally, residents at Bonell were treated
by a few doctors locally, as well as doctors from the Denver area. The process lacked cohesiveness and there were communication difficulties. Often, if a resident experienced a medical problem and the doctor wasn’t available to perform an onsite evaluation, the doctor inevitably ordered the patient to be sent to the hospital. Even if the issue didn’t necessarily merit hospitalization, the doctor had no way of knowing this, so a trip to the emergency room seemed to be the safest solution. “This wasn’t cost effective and it’s just not good medical care, so Bonell approached North
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