ELKINS — Davis Health System is focusing on listening to and engaging with their patients, their employees and the community, according to DHS’s new Senior Vice President Chief Administrative Officer Ron Andro and Chief Nursing Officer Diana Landsverk.

Andro, who took over the role of Senior Vice President Chief Administrative Officer in December, says he’s been using the past two months in the position to learn more about Davis Health System’s team and medical center, as well as the community they serve. Andro made appearances at Chamber of Commerce events and at the Elkins City Council’s Jan. 9 meeting to introduce himself to community leaders.

“It’s been good to meet those in the community,” Andro told The Inter-Mountain. “We have a lot of opportunity here, and, within that context, too, we are the 24/7 medical center that is always available to those that we serve… We continue to focus on listening to the community for their needs, from a healthcare perspective.”

Landsverk, who became the new Chief Nursing Officer in November, echoed Andro’s sentiments, explaining that her focus has been on engagement within the hospital.

“Patient satisfaction is very high on our list of making sure that we’re meeting the need of the community,” Landsverk told The Inter-Mountain. “(Andro)’s done a lot of community effort, I’ve been concentrated at the hospital.”

Lansverk said she has met with DHS’s Community Patient Experience Committee and discussed what the committee and community are looking for from the system. She said the committee has brought up to her the issues of access and friendly, timely care in the ER. Another issue Lansverk is focusing on is setting perimeters for faster timeframes for getting discharged patients back home.

“Our first job is to listen,” Andro said. “So we’re listening intently to the community, we’re listening to our staff, we’re listening to our patients and families. We’re trying to discern what it is they’re looking for from us… it also helps in the engagement of our staff and our community and how we develop the medical center.”

Lansverk said DHS also wants to maintain their patients in the community, even if the patient needs to be sent to a different facility.

“Even though we may not have a service here, we always want to be able to, if we need to, say, send  them to Morgantown, to Mon Health… we want to send them, have that and then we want to send them back into our community,” she said.

Lansverk added that they’ve begun to notice that DHS has been maintaining more of their patients instead of having to send them out, and that the hospital has become a “hub” of sorts for other hospitals — like Mon Health Stonewall Jackson Memorial Hospital in Lewis County, Broaddus Hospital in Barbour County and Webster County Memorial Hospital — to send patients to.

When asked if he had noticed any changes in engagement in the community and hospital in the two months Andro said he believed so.

“When we’re looking at the development of services, we’re partnering with our doctors and we’re asking the question, ‘What’s new and advancing?'” Andro said. “So we believe there’s some things right now that we’re proposing to (Vandalia Health) that we think will further advance Davis Health.”

Andro noted officials are already developing programs for their staff, including a “Good Catch” program that rewards employees when they catch something with a patient before it happens, the “Daisy Awards” for nursing, and evolving the Employee Recognition Program.

DHS is also trying to put together programs to help staff expand their education and career paths.

“People may come in as a nursing assistant or a patient care technician and we want to encourage them and help them to be nurses, or maybe they want to be physicians or maybe they want to be respiratory therapists or maybe want to be radiology technologists or laboratory technologists,” Andro said. “So we want to be part of the career path for our employees, so that when they come in, we want to tell them that we have opportunities for them and they can become more.”

Lansverk added that officials are big on having internships, especially with those in the community, and want to build that “pipeline” toward careers in healthcare.

When asked what the future of Davis Health looked like, Andro said they’re here to stay.

“We’re not going anywhere,” Andro said. “We continue to have strong support from our system and strong support from our leadership for what we do together. Our staff are very committed… We have 100 years here in this place. We’re going to continue to advance ourselves, and we think, in listening to our community, we have a sense of what it is they’re asking us for, and we’re going to keep listening to the community, because we believe we’re their partners…”