How Howard County Medical Center Stays Independent Through Partnerships and Technology

At a time when rural health care is struggling—losing doctors, hospitals, and even pharmacies—it’s valuable to hear from the leader of a small rural health center that is adopting modern tools and staying financially afloat. Howard County Medical Center is a 10-bed critical access hospital in rural Nebraska with two attached clinics employing nine providers. At the recent MEDITECH LIVE conference, we sat down with CEO Arlan Johnson where he describes their strategy to stay independent and successful.

At the start of our interview, Johnson describes the MEDITECH EHR they have used for ten years, and related technologies that work with it. They recently installed AI documentation, which helps prevent information in interviews from being forgotten. They obtained (with a consortium to which they belong) rural health transformation payments to install remote patient monitoring.

As an ACO, they are committed to finding problems early and keeping patients out of the hospital. They recently collaborated with the community to raise 8 million dollars to create a wellness center.

Because the EHR is the hub of their technology, they prefer to work with other vendors that know MEDITECH and are integrated with it. “Our first concern is how it works with MEDITECH,” Johnson says.

Technology is an important part of their strategy; as Johnson puts it, patients need the tools to improve their health, and doctors do too. However, their health center is also concerned with keeping leadership close to the community. Independence is crucial so that they can make decisions quickly and maintain continuity of care. They also want to attract good staff and provide people in the community with good jobs, so they have to avoid the temptation to cut costs that power many large organizations.

Another key strategy keeping Howard County Medical Center independent is partnerships. Several types of partnerships are mentioned in our interview, including a clinically integrated network of 22 hospitals called the Nebraska High Value Network, another consortium of 35 independent hospitals, and a co-op to buy equipment. Johnson points out that scale matters, and that it’s better to deal with insurers as part of a large patient base.

Johnson ends by reminding providers to stay alert to finances. Howard County Medical Center is now virtually debt-free and has the financial resources to continue investing in digital technology.

Watch our interview with Arlan Johnson from Howard County Medical Center to learn more about how the organization is successfully serving its community.

Learn more about Howard County Medical Center: https://hcmc.us.com/

Learn more about MEDITECH: https://ehr.meditech.com/

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