Brownsville’s
Connection to Health
By Sonia Outlaw-Clark
Did you notice something new in your mailbox? Haywood Park
Community Hospital (HPCH) is serious about providing Haywood Countians with the
best possible health care and part of that effort is “Health Connection.” The premier issue of this
newsletter appeared in mailboxes this week.
Haywood Park will publish Health Connection quarterly and is dedicated to offering you timely health-related information as well as keeping you informed of the latest happenings and advances at HPCH.
According to Thomas Schmitt, chief executive officer of HPCH, “Last year was a good one for the hospital.” Not only did they add a new general surgeon, Dr. Hisman Percival, and reopened the Brownsville Surgery Center, Haywood Park also has a new Ob/Gyn, Dr. Kristie Wren, who is at the West Tennessee Women’s Health Center.
This year, HPCH held an open house for its new Progressive Care Unit on February 13. “This 4-bed unit is similar to a step-down unit at larger hospital,” says Jackie Collins, marketing director at HPCH. The unit allows patients to be monitored 24/7 and allows for a lower nurse/patient ratio. What it also does is eliminate the need for patients to be transferred to bigger hospitals, making the situation better for family members and also allowing for more personalized care.
That personalized care is something Haywood Park is known
for. The emergency room has scored the highest in customer satisfaction for the
past four quarters and, “the medical/surgical unit has been the highest for
three consecutive quarters,” says Schmitt.
This is all good news for Brownsville and Haywood Countians who no longer have to go out of town to receive quality healthcare. HPCH is also dedicated to the continued education of their staff and was recently certified as a Get With The Guidelines hospital by the American Heart Association. The staff has also been honored with the Community Health Systems award for Outstanding Achievement in Quality.
Haywood Park is committed to the community in numerous ways. This is evident in the recent cookbook fundraiser to benefit the March of Dimes, an active Relay for Life team and Senior Circle program, as well as supporting local schools and the Carl Perkins Center.
And it doesn’t stop there. You can now access
health-related news by clicking on HPCH’s new website: www.haywoodparkcommunity.com. “We
partner with the Discovery Channel,” says Collins, “and they have a fantastic
health website that has a vast amount of info.” This partnership allows HPCH to
offer fast and easy information right at your fingertips. Designed to enhance
services to patients and provide the tools for maintaining health, the website
will offer educational and interactive components like a medical library and
explanations of various procedures and tests.
If by chance you happened to throw the first issue of Health Connection in the trash, not realizing what it was, don’t worry. You can also access it through the website. The next issue will publish in mid-May, and if you want to be absolutely sure that you will receive it, call Jackie Collins at 731-772-8475 to subscribe. It’s free and well worth the read.