EDITORIAL: HELP FRHS; TAKE THE SURVEY NOW

Since it opened as a 16-bed hospital in 1952, the health care facility known today as Freeman Regional Health Services (FRHS) has been serving the people of the Freeman community and surrounding area with services that have changed with the times. That included a 30-bed addition to the hospital in 1959, the addition of an extended care and rehabilitation center in 1971 and countless other improvements in the years and decades that followed — including what was known as “The Connection Project” that was completed in 1994 that set the local health care facility up a new era to come.

Freeman Regional Health Services remains one of this community’s most hailed institutions, but leadership there knows it needs to continue to make strides to get better, as has been the case since the beginning. That includes a developing partnership with the Salem Mennonite Home that could lead to a brand-new, joint health care campus in the long-term.

But there are also short-term goals.

To that end, FRHS is working in partnership with District 3 Planning and Development to learn what areas are, as CEO Courtney Unruh says, “good, bad and otherwise.” A Community Health Needs Assessment, which is federally mandated for all critical access hospitals every three years, includes a survey that asks its users to respond to various questions using a rating system. District 3 Planning and Development and hospital leadership will use the data obtained to strategically develop a plan for 2023 and beyond.

And that’s where the public comes in. Unruh said FRHS hasn’t had the kind of response it is looking for since the survey hit the FRHS website and Facebook page in July. In fact, she said in an interview last week, the data collected wasn’t even enough to be statistically relevant.

So it’s time to step up and help the health care facility out in the same way the health care facility has been helping countless men, women and children for 70 years.

A link to the survey is available here, under the “Campus News/News & Events” link at freemanregional.com, or by using the QR code that accompanies the story on page 2A.

It takes but a few minutes, and that’s nothing when it comes to vitality and future growth of one of Freeman’s finest institutes.

Jeremy Waltner  |  Editor & Publisher