Thursday, March 28, 2024

Three Rivers Hospital and North Valley Hospital to share CEO Scott Graham

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BREWSTER – The trend of hospitals around the nation toward consolidation of systems and practices to reduce financial pressures while maintaining quality health care has come to Three Rivers Hospital (TRH) whose Board of Commissioners has elected to share the services of THR CEO Scott Graham with North Valley Hospital (NVH) in Tonasket. The CEO sharing arrangement will not be formalized until the NVH board meets on July 12 in Tonasket.

In a media release of June 29, TRH Board Chair Vicki Orford said: “We have aunique opportunity to support our community through this collaboration. Scott is willing to try it, the board feels we need to try it, and it has such a great potential to start creating a better health delivery system in our region, we’ve got to give it a good try.”
Initial steps taken along the way to a shared CEO included joint training sessions, shared physicians, and an exchange of ideas.

The new arrangement has been well received by employees at both hospitals and community members as the hospital districts continue to explore ways to maintain the quality of locally delivered health care.

Graham endorsed the advantages of the new arrangement.

“The goal will be to appoint me as CEO of both facilities,” said Graham. “There are a couple wins there for us; one is that my salary will be split across the two hospitals, reducing the administrative burden for each facility and it also gives us the opportunity to look at other ways to share staff and resources.”

While it remains unknown how the relationship will turn out, both facilities have option to reverse their decision if it develops that the new arrangement is not fitting their needs. In the meantime, Graham sees the decision as a unique opportunity to a collaboration, consolidation, and integration of healthcare across the region.

“All the indications are that this agreement makes sense from a financial perspective, it makes sense from an operational perspective, and from a long-term viability perspective.” Graham said.

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