MMH receives on-site visit from SQSS President/CEO Bainbridge

McCurtain Memorial Hospital, in a separate visit paid for through federal grant dollars, received an on-site visit on Thursday, June 13, from Darlene Bainbridge - the President and CEO of Strategic Quality Support System (SQSS).

Bainbridge, a former rural, Critical Access Hospital (CAH) administrator from Buffalo, New York, is an expert in quality improvement and risk management for hospitals. Darlene spent all day Thursday at MMH and held a round-table discussion with all MMH leadership about its operations.

Bainbridge, a creator of the SQSS software that helps hospitals track and improve quality, brings decades of experience and a unique approach to rural American hospitals. Of focus during her visit to MMH was not only quality and risk management, but revenue cycle.

“Darlene is an invaluable asset to rural hospitals,” MMH President and CEO Brian Whitfield said. “She is able to articulate what she’s learned over forty years and impart that knowledge to hospital administrators struggling in rural hospitals where resources are very limited.”

Whitfield said that MMH has made great strides in its operations but that financial hardships make progress hard.

“The challenges we face are real whether it comes down to a lack of technology or the aging infrastructure of the hospital.” Whitfield said. “We simply have to move ahead with todays processes and cannot rely on things we learned twenty years ago - it’s simply a different world in healthcare.”

Bainbridge, funded through grant dollars, will remain a contact for the hospital as it moves forward in utilizing the SQSS software and for consulting on a variety of operational objectives.