Bath Community Hospital Names Kathy Landreth CEO

Bath Community Hospital has had its share of struggles in the past year, but the new CEO, Kathy Landreth brings in a positive new direction.  Her warm and welcoming attitude will go a long way towards healing some of the discord, and may help some residents and staff put the pain, a natural part of transition, behind them.

It hasn’t quite been a year since Landreth’s arrival, but she’s worked steadily and calmly to see the hospital continues to offer fine health care to this whole area.  Kathy Landreth,

“I came here in October of 2014, and I came in the capacity of Chief Nursing officer on an interim basis, and that gradually grew into other positions with a greater amount of responsibility.”

When asked about the role the large construction project has played in her new job,

Landreth replied,

“One of the things that has happened since I’ve been here though is we have actually moved in and taken ownership of this three story addition.  On the first floor we opened a new emergency department; on the second floor we have a new Clinic building, and on the third floor are administrative offices. So, that was moved into pretty quickly after I arrived here in October.  I knew the plans, and fortunately I inherited our Chief Financial Officer, Greg Gutmeyer, (sp?) who is overseeing the construction project.  So I’ve been very fortunate to have him on the staff here, and he’s kept me abreast of all the things here that are going on with our construction.  Our final phases of this construction are set to end in April-May of 2016, so still we have some significant improvements that we are making to our facility.”

Bath Community Hospital is the third largest employer in the county.  The bigger, improved facility does help staff do their jobs more easily, and efficiently.  And efficiency and cooperation are essential to operating a small hospital in a manner that it can continue to sustain itself.   Continuing to describe the set-up of the hospital, Landreth also mentioned a couple of changes.

“The clinics on the second floor have all of our primary care physicians in them.  We have a total of three physicians which will be going down to two physicians.  We had a physician who decided to not renew his contract. We’re sad to see him go, but we wish him the very best in his future endeavors. So that will leave two primary care physicians, but we also have three nurse practitioners who provide services for our county.  And they do a phenomenal job, and they have a huge patient database.  We are talking about ‘How will we move forward with making sure we have the proper amount of coverage in our Rural Health Clinic?’

We do have another location in Millboro that is a Rural Health Clinic.  It is a satellite that’s a provider-based clinic, and we have Kim Rexrode that goes to that clinic.  She was staffing that clinic one day a week, and we had a huge ask from that very small community that we would consider, because that didn’t feel like enough time for them, if we would consider a second day.  And I’m pleased to announce that we did open it up for a second day, and she sees more patients there sometimes on a day, than she sees here with those two days she’s here. So, we’re looking at more ways that we can insure that we are meeting the health care needs of the citizens of Bath County.”

From the new Emergency Room, to Diabetes Education, to the Wellness Center for developing healthy habits, Bath Community Hospital strives to maintain the balance between offering a wide range of quality services for residents, and a meeting its bottom line.  For the second part in this two-part pair of stories, please tune in tomorrow to Allegheny Mountain radio.