Fallon County
T IMES March 6, 2020
BAKER, MONTANA
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Child Care project grant first of several projects By Brad Mosher
bmosher@countrymedia.net
Child care became a urgent priority for Baker and the surrounding communities almost two years ago when one closed in Baker, according to the executive director of SMART (Southeast Montana Area Revitalization Team). “It really put a strain on families in the area,” Shanny Spang Gion said. “That was about 25 slots or so of child care that vanished.” “What is existing now is a lot of in-home care. I do have to give them a lot of credit for having a big heart and come out of retirement, if you will, and try to offer some solutions for the shortage in child health care. They are filling a need with the shortage here. “What we are hoping to plan for is just providing another option,” she said, noting the recent grant which allows planning for a child care facility in Baker to begin. “We understand that families can make their own decisions about the type of care and the environment that they want for their child. Some parents may indeed want a smaller environment, like an in-home provider. We certainly understand that,” Gion said. “We do want to offer another option. But it is really focused on learning and development of the child from age zero to five,” she added. “We are trying to do
Prom Canidates on page 6
the infrastructure. “The Port Authority or the EMEDA (Eastern Montana Economic Development Agency) is not in the business of being in business. But we can make more business opportunities available. That is what we seek to do by providing the infrastructure for someone else to come in and provide a high quality, early childhood learning center,” she explained. “We created and looked at everything. We created what we call a community child care committee where we found volunteers from our public listening sessions. The volunteers have checked what other communities have done across the state and across the nation,” she added. “We have a wealth of information now, but what we really need is for it to be put in some order. As a publicly funded entity, we are being very careful the planning and how that unfolds. We agreed to look at grant funding to really delineate what the concrete options could be (for the project).” That is where a PAR (Preliminary Architect Report) comes in, she added. “They will be able to take in all the information we gathered and they will gather more information and really put it into some viable alternatives for the Port Authority to make a good decision. The PAR is often a requirement needed when a project seeks funding or grants. “I am very excited about it.
New printer brings new look to Times
I know we have been talking about this project for a long time. We are a public entity, so we want to be very thorough in our planning. It takes awhile, but I think the wait will be worth it,” she said. “We have also hired a child care consultant with expertise and experience in so many different facets of the child care industry. He has helped on the business end to really understand the ins and outs of how a child care business could run and understand how to make it successful,” Gion said. “Our board was concerned about making the infrastructure available, but they wanted to make sure the business lasted,” she said. The board wants to prevent a scenario where the center is opened and then folding within a couple of years due to revenue or expenses. “They wanted us to take a deeper look at the ins and outs of an actual operating budget for a child care center,” she said, noting that the consultant has also helped see what effect the state of Montana would have on a child care center. “There has been a lot of good work so far and this PAR is the absolute logical next step. Once that PAR is completed I think our board is going to be in a great position to make a decision on what to do going forward.” That would help in selecting the site for the facility and how to make the project financially viable, she added.
Photos by Brad Mosher
Fallon Medical Complex makes nationwide list Staff Report
Fallon Medical Complex in Baker is one of six facilities in Montana to be named on a list of the 2020 Top 100 Critical Access Hospitals in the nation. In addition to the Baker facility, the Barrett Hospital and Healthcare (Dillon), Beartooth Billings Clinic (Red Lodge), Central Montana Medical Center (Lewistown), Community Hospital of Anaconda (Anaconda) and North Valley Hospital (Whitefish) also made the list. By comparison, North Dakota had 12 make the list, while Nebraska had 13. No Wyoming hospitals were on the list. According to the Chartis Group, the annual list of the Top 100 Critical Access Hospitals is the result of a survey. Each year, the rural hospitals are analyzed through the lens of the Hospital Strength INDEX, the industry’s most comprehensive and objective assessment of rural hospital performance in the United States. Reportedly, these top performers are honored for excelling in managing risk, achieving higher quality, securing better outcomes, increasing patient satisfaction, and operating at a lower cost than their peers. “These groups serve as a benchmark for other rural facilities as they strive to achieve similar results and provide a blueprint for successfully navigating the uncertainty of the new healthcare,” a spokesman for the Chartis Group said in a release that announced the top 100 for the year 2020. “Two of the most significant barriers impacting a rural hospital’s ability to identify gaps in performance and create improvement are, limited visibility into peer performance and limited access to timely and accurate benchmarks,” said Michael Topchik, National Leader, The Chartis Center for Rural Health. “By constructing the INDEX using
rural-relevant metrics, we’re providing hospital leaders with the foundation necessary to break down these barriers and work collaboratively to improve hospital quality, patient safety, operations and finance.” Since its inception in 2011, the Top 100 Critical Access Hospital award has recognized more than 350 hospitals across the United States. Among the Critical Access Hospitals receiving Top 100 status this year are 19 first-time recipients as well as seven hospitals earning this recognition for the ninth time. First introduced in 2016, the Top 100 Rural & Community Hospitals award has recognized more than 200 hospitals. This year, the list contains 18 first-time award winners along with 25 hospitals who have been honored in each of the award’s five years. “At a time when much of the national conversation surrounding rural healthcare focuses on instability, the Top 100 Critical Access Hospitals and Top 100 Rural & Community Hospitals remind us that rural providers haven’t lost touch with their mission and are committed to delivering better quality, better outcomes and better patient satisfaction. It’s a pleasure to be able to not only recognize this year’s recipients, but our larger group of top 100 alumni as we celebrate ten years of the Hospital Strength INDEX,” said Topchik. Based entirely on publicly available data, the INDEX is the industry’s most comprehensive and objective assessment of rural hospital performance. Utilizing 50 independent indicators, the INDEX assesses performance across eight pillars of performance that span market-, value- and finance-based categories. The INDEX framework is widely used across the nation by independent rural hospitals, health systems with rural footprints and state offices of rural health which provide access to INDEX analytics through grant-funded initiatives.
Staff Report
There will be a new look to the Fallon County Times. Starting with the March 6 issue, the Times will be printed at Star Printing in Miles City. The Fallon County Times will be a little bit larger, and only contain four color pages. General manager, Tina Rost, for the Fallon County Times, stated that aside from the size and fewer color pages, the content of the paper will stay the same. All of the local and school news will not change. The newspaper had been printed by the Dickinson Press, but that company recently announced they would no longer be printing newspapers in Dickinson as it transitioned to a weekly publication. According to Joe Warren, the Director of Operations for Country Media Inc., the changes at the Dickinson Press meant they would no longer be able to print the Country Media publications for Bowman and Baker. “We were excited to find a geographically close solution so that we could bring Baker and Fallon County the news each week. We have had a relationship with the Miles City operation with some of our special sections and tabs. They are used to working with our production facilities,” Warren said. Country Media is based in Salem, OR, with newspapers in Oregon, California, North Dakota and Montana.
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Keystone XL pipeline hearing goes smoothly By Brad Mosher
bmosher@countrymedia.net
A community hearing covering the proposed Keystone XL pipeline planned route through Fallon County was successful on Feb. 27, at the Fallon County Fairgrounds, according to a company spokeswoman. TC Energy spokeswoman Sara Raebern said she was pleased with the response by the community. More than 30 people attended the hearing, which lasted slightly more
than a half hour. The company started a series of hearings along the route several days earlier and Raebern said they had seen a good community response at each of the stops. “It has been great. We have had a good reception and a lot of good questions and a lot of wide-ranging questions. Our guys try to do a really good job of covering what they think is important (to each community) based on the location,” she explained.
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According to Raebern, the construction phase of the project will be starting in April in Fallon County and concluding in December. “We’d be coming back in the spring (2021) to do remediation. We want to make sure we put it back to the way it was before we came,” she said. “We know how Mother Nature is… especially in South Dakota, Montana and Nebraska,” she said, noting that warm weather
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