Bringing awareness to the dedication of Mount Evans Home Health Care & Hospice sta

10,880. That’s the number of miles clinicians drove last year for Mount Evans Home Health Care & Hospice to see their patients. 310,800 miles. And Mount Evans wasn’t reimbursed for a penny of it.

3 ese clinicians drive from the eastern edge of the foothills to the Continental Divide. at means all of Clear Creek County, all of Gilpin County, Park County clear out to Kenosha Pass, and the mountain parts of Je co, including not just Evergreen and Conifer but also Golden and Morrison.

I was on the board there for 12 years but only learned about this uncompensated cost at a meeting this month for former board members like me.

For the almost 60 who work in the eld — nurses and therapists, social workers, certi ed nursing assistants and chaplains — that’s a lot of driving. So let me give you that gure again: 310,800 miles. It’s important because while Medicare, Medicaid and private insurance companies pay a portion of the hospice and home health services that Mount Evans’s sta provide wherever patients live, they don’t compensate Mount Evans for what it takes to get there.

It’s not cheap. Like many commercial companies, Mount Evans pays the rate the IRS decrees, which for a

GUEST COLUMN while was 53.5-cents per mile but last year went up to 62.5-cents. Do the math and you see what it cost in 2022: more than $192,000. All of it has to be covered by supporters’ donations. e cost wasn’t always so high, because neither the patient load nor the cost of reaching patients was always so big. When Mount Evans was founded more than 40 years ago, it helped 15 hospice patients in its rst year. I went on the Mount Evans board in 2005 and at that point, the count had risen to 628 patients a year. When I was done 12 years later, it was over 900. Now that number has skyrocketed to more than 1,200. Maybe a more telling fact is that those 1,200+ patients last year had more than 25,000 visits in their homes. For the clinicians, that meant almost 9,000 hours of just driving. Like the legendary postman, neither snow, nor rain, nor heat, nor gloom of night stops these clinicians from their appointed rounds.

One therapist, Isabelle Comina, tells the story of a Friday afternoon when saw a patient in Idaho Springs, then headed west for her nal stop of the day, a 4 p.m. appointment with a patient in Georgetown. But suddenly, when Isabelle was only about twenty cars short of an offramp that would get her to the frontage road, the tra c stopped cold. e way she put it is, “Not able to go forward, not able to go back, not able to go to the bathroom.” She nally reached her patient at 7 p.m. ese Mount Evans clinicians drive the worst roads in the four counties they serve. ey navigate the notorious Oh-My-God Road. ey climb steep twisty dirt driveways that have turned to ice. Some days they have to put on crampons

A registered nurse named Teri McLaughlin lives in Blackhawk but in the middle of one night during a snowstorm, as the nurse on call, her phone rang telling her that a hospice patient in Bailey was in the last stage of death. She got in her car at 1 a.m. and got there at 4 a.m.

Reed Brandenburg, a physical therapist, usually works the I-70 corridor and had to reach a patient on a road near St. Mary’s Glacier that even the locals said he shouldn’t even attempt to use after a snowstorm. But he had to get there, so he parked at the bottom of a hill and snowshoed in the better part of a mile with his supplies — all the paraphernalia the rest of us would see in a PT’s o ce — on his back.

Lessons from the masters

During a conversation with a couple of friends and colleagues in the personal and professional development industry, we found our way into the topic of how we got started in the business and who some the early heroes were who inspired and motivated us to be better.

As we thought about those legendary speakers and authors, we also talked about how their teachings have withstood the test of time.

WINNING WORDS e greatest compliment paid to them is that we can nd iterations of their work in the pub-

Although they all began their own journey many decades ago, the principles that each one built their body of work upon are all still relevant today.

LINDA SHAPLEY Publisher lshapley@coloradocommunitymedia.com

MICHAEL DE YOANNA Editor-in-Chief michael@coloradocommunitymedia.com lished books, blogs and columns of today’s thought leaders.

Although we agreed on a few names, each of us had our top three or four. For me, the authors and experts who had a signi cant impact on my success included Zig Ziglar, Tom Hopkins, Denis Waitley and David Sandler.

Looking at Zig Ziglar’s career, many will refer to him as the master motivator, or remember him as the salesman’s salesman. With

KRISTEN FIORE West Metro Editor kfiore@coloradocommunitymedia.com

DEB HURLEY BROBST Community Editor dbrobst@coloradocommunitymedia.com to make it up the last hundred yards. ey go where they’re needed no matter where they live, no matter where they are, no matter what time of day or night, no matter what the weather.

And they go where there’s no cell service, which mainly means the outer reaches of Gilpin and Park Counties. Because they have to be kept apprised when they’re on their way about any changes in a critical patient’s condition, and because they have to keep Mount Evans apprised if they have a mishap like sliding into a ditch, which has happened, there is an administrator on call 24/7 who they call when they know they’re about to lose cell service, and when they get it back. ey can’t do any of this if they don’t drive to where the patients are. at’s part of the reason Mount Evans fundraises: https://mtevans.org/ support-mount-evans/donate/. No one else pays for those 310,880 miles its clinicians travel. It has to pay every penny itself.

Greg Dobbs is a three-time Emmy Award winner who worked as a political and foreign correspondent for two television networks. He also wrote weekly columns for the Rocky Mountain News, then e Denver Post. Dobbs and his family have lived in Evergreen for 37 years.

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LINDSAY NICOLETTI Operations/ Circulation Manager lnicoletti@coloradocommunitymedia.com

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RUTH DANIELS Classified Sales rdaniels@coloradocommunitymedia.com more than 30 books to his name, Zig taught us all so much about life, not just sales, leadership, or business, his teachings went far beyond those topics. Zig was all about building up the person as his mission was to help as many people as possible with their personal, professional and spiritual lives so that he could have a positive impact on the world. I thank Zig for all that he taught me

SEE NORTON, P9

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Government cannot do everything. at sentence is a popular truism on the political right. It is correct for a very practical reason. e government does not have an endless supply of money. Money for government projects does eventually dry up once those funds are exhausted. Budgets have limits. Of course, there are some who would like for the government to do more with more money from the public. But if taxes are raised to sky-high levels, then some will feel disincentivized to earn money. at ultimately serves no end because tax revenues would then dry up. Tax money does not grow on trees, it is generated by the work and sweat that citizens toil under to provide for themselves.

When I started to write this series of opinion pieces on the budget I did it with the intention of sharing something that Je erson County and https://mtevans.org/ 310,880 lived and for being an incredible role model of consistency, guiding me to being a “meaningful speci c,” instead of a “wandering generality.” If you haven’t read “See You at the Top” I highly recommend it. As a student of Tom Hopkins and having read every book he has written and having attended dozens of his seminars, I credit Tom with helping me become a top performer throughout my career. Even in leadership roles, his teachings were so impactful. In sales, we hear the word “no” a whole lot more often than we hear “yes.” Tom Hopkin’s Champion Creed instilled in me the speci c mindset I needed to push through the losses and bad days and work towards the overwhelmingly successful days. e Champion Creed says this, “I am not judged by the number of times I fail, but by the number of times I succeed. And the number of times I succeed is in direct proportion to the number of times I can fail and keep trying.” If you are in sales, Tom’s book “How to Master the Art of Selling” is a must-read. Back in 1999 I had the opportunity to meet Denis Waitley in person. From that day on we enjoyed both a personal and professional relationship. Denis taught me so much about the attitude of winning and de ning success. He was a terri c encourager, and I would leave every conversation with him having

Colorado does that has a large impact on your lives as citizens. I could have written much more than I have. Zerobased budgeting is a particular pet peeve of mine because it forces unnecessary and unwarranted governmental expenditures to occur because revenues and expenditures must always be equal. I wanted to share how unfunded mandates from both the federal and state government crowd out the budgetary choices that should only belong to our elected ofcials here in Je erson County and Colorado.

I am on the political right. I think the Taxpayers Bill of Rights (TABOR) is a good thing. I believe that gov- learned so much more each time. His book and program, “ e Psychology of Winning,” and now “ e New Psychology of Winning,” will inspire you and teach you how to create your own blueprint for success. ernment should restrain its spending and think about what it spends seriously and with deliberation. I am not someone who thinks that those on the lower rungs of America’s economic ladder should be left in benign neglect. Government does indeed take care of the less fortunate in our society but they cannot do a perfect job of it. Private charity then steps up to augment where government assistance leaves o . ose who contribute towards the many wonderful and varied private charities within our state contribute their money in the hopes of assisting Colorado’s less fortunate. ose charities and donors deserve a hearty thank you from all of us because they make the lives of the less fortunate in Colorado better. In fact, what they do is keep budgets from becoming larger than they already currently are. May it always be so that generosity is extended by good

Last, and certainly not least, David Sandler was so far ahead of his time with his revolutionary sales process. David’s approach is a simple one, disarming honesty. He developed a sales process that favored the buyer and the seller so that the interaction was based on both parties being willing to have an open and honest adult-toadult truth-based conversation. No manipulation, just a conversation where there is no mysti cation about what is happening or what will happen next. His book, “You Can’t Teach a Kid to Ride a Bike at a Seminar,” will change the way you sell. ere have been so many others who have shaped my career and the careers of millions of others, and I thank them all for their impact on my personal and professional life. Who are some of your favorite authors and experts? I would love to hear all about them at gotonorton@gmail. com, and when we can learn and apply the wisdom of those who are willing to teach us, it really will be a better than good life.

Michael Norton is an author, a personal and professional coach, consultant, trainer, encourager and motivator of individuals and businesses, working with organizations and associations across multiple industries.