Livingston Health Care Commemorative Edition 2015

Livingston HealthCare

For The Future

A publication of The Livingston Enterprise

Inside:Building against the wind – Page 5Hospital history – Page 7A room by room tour – Page 9High-tech hospital – Page 12 The new lab – Page 21The new cafeteria – Page 22And more ...

Page 2 I Livingston HealthCare For The Future I October 22, 2015


Welcome to the future of Livingston HealthCare The future of health care in Park Coun-ty is here.

The new Livingston HealthCare facility opens next week and will operate as a medical campus with services offered at a state-of-the-art facility.

Construction of the new 125,000-square-foot facility, located at 320 Alpenglow Lane, has been compared to the railroad setting up shop here in the 1880s.

The $43.5-million hospital and clinic facility marks the largest investment in Park County in recent memory, and all residents should take pride in this com-mitment to our community.

The Livingston Enterprise published this special edition to celebrate the open-

ing of the new Livingston HealthCare campus.

The subsequent pages tell the story of the history of health care in Park County while also featuring the new facility, those who built it and those who will work inside its walls in the coming years.

Area residents have taken a special interest in the new facility throughout its construction, and more than 1,000 people attended an Oct. 10 grand opening of the new 25-bed critical access hospital.

The new hospital features a Level IV community trauma emergency depart-ment, multi-disciplinary physician clinic, surgery, ICU, lab services, administra-

tive offices, imaging, a women’s center, sleep center, home care, hospice care, orthopedics, rehabilitation services and labor and delivery.

The new hospital officially opens on Oct. 27, and this special edition offers readers a detailed look at what to expect when visiting the new Livingston Health-Care.

A big kudos to LHC officials and medi-cal staff, to the hard-working construc-tion employees and to Park County resi-dents, all of whom worked together to make a dream come true.

This is Livingston HealthCare for the future.

— The Livingston Enterprise

Enterprise photo by Hunter D’Antuono

TJ Fletchall of Cashman Nursery & Landscaping sweeps up dust after landscaping around the Livingston HealthCare entrance sign on Oct. 5.


• Tear off of existing roof systems• Custom Metal Fabrication and

installation for siding, trims, gutters and roofing including copper and various steel products

• Installation of standing metal seam panel systems including SnapLock and mechanical lock systems

• Tuff Rib and corrugated steel panel systems

• Single-ply membrane systems including EPDM, TPO and PVC

• BUR repairs involving modified/torch down roofing and coatings including Elastomeric

• Cedar Shake installation• Slate, Tile and composite roofing

including DaVinci Roofscapes installation

• Shingle installation including granulated steel shingles

• Zinc counter tops and sinks

Phone: 223-0742 Fax: 222-0182


Through ‘brutal’ wind, cold and snow, a beautiful structure emerges

By Dwight Harriman Enterprise Staff Writer

Ever tried to build a hospital in the Livings-ton wind?

It can be done, but you might have to buy lots of goggles and straw bales to pull it off.

Jeff Halsey, job superintendent for Swank Enter-prises, the general contractor that built the new Liv-ingston HealthCare facility east of Livingston, said one of the biggest challenges of the project, which began November 2013, was dealing with the infa-mous local wind.

“It was brutal,” Halsey said during a recent inter-view at his work site office trailer.

The gales kicked up so much snow and dust it impeded his workers.

“They couldn’t see because of the wind,” he said.So he did what any smart job superintendent

would do — he bought them ski goggles.And not just that.“I bought 80 big square straw bales and I stacked

them three high … I followed my crew around with that wind break” as they worked, he said.

Any time they saw semi-truck traffic being rerouted through town, “we knew it was going to be a tough day,” Halsey said.

“You could never let your guard down out here about your stuff,” he added. “Nothing that weighed less than 80 pounds could be left alone.”

And it wasn’t just the wind. There was the snow and cold to contend with.

He said the winter they put in the hospital’s foun-dation — 2013-14 — was the snowiest on record.

Sometimes the cold shut things down entirely. Halsey’s work log for Nov. 21, 2013, reads: “Nothing today — too damn cold.”

A ‘pretty’ buildingOn the other side of it, one of the things Halsey

said he enjoyed the most about the project was cre-ating such a beautiful building with an abundance of brick and stone in the design.

“I haven’t worked on a building this pretty … in a long, long time,” he said.

“We just don’t get to work with this much stone and brick ever … it’s a pretty building,” he reiterat-ed.

Asked what he thought was the neatest part of the building, he didn’t hesitate.

“Oh, the lobby, of course,” he said of the expansive atrium that features abundant light, two fireplaces and a beautifully designed, broad stairway leading to the second floor.

But he also loves the working end of the new hos-pital campus. For him the most impressive room in that sense is the main equipment room dubbed “the penthouse,” which contains the HVAC equipment — heating, ventilation and air conditioning — along with the boilers and well pumps.

Job commitmentHalsey, who hails originally from Indiana, lives in

Whitefish. During the hospital job, he went home every weekend, but while here put in 10- to 12-hour days.

“I eat, sleep and drink these jobs,” he said. “It’s my mission to do what I’m told to do.”

And a big job it was. At the peak of the work, there were 90 to 110 employees working for 20 to 30

subcontractors, Halsey said.Perhaps that’s why the thing he is most proud of is

that, in the two years it took to build the new hospi-tal, no one got hurt.

“Everybody went home to their family every night,” he said.

Working togetherHalsey expressed appreciation for the good work

done by local workers on his force; the local motels and vendors who were “more than happy to help us, which was really cool”; and hospital personnel who teamed up with him.

“The folks that we worked with were all fantas-tic,” the superintendent said. “We worked together as a team to solve problems, and that’s a big deal.”

Those thoughts were echoed by LHC CEO Bren Lowe.

“It was truly a partnership of give and take” and working things out together, Lowe said of working with Swank and Halsey.

Because of that, project costs were held to about $220 per square foot, which Lowe said is unheard of elsewhere, citing a national average of about $320 per square foot for similar medical projects.

Lowe said LHC chose Swank and Halsey because of their experience in health care projects, saying the entire company is experienced, organized and efficient.

“It’s been a pleasure to work with him,” Lowe said of Halsey.

ABOVE: Shown is the job scene of the new hospital on Feb. 26 of this year. Bitter cold and wind made getting work done a challenge.Enterprise photo by Hunter D’Antuono

LEFT: Jeff Halsey, job superintendent for Swank Enterprises, the general contractor that built the new Livingston HealthCare facility, is pictured in front of the nearly completed new hospital in early October.Enterprise photo by Dwight Harriman


general contractors

Kalispell Office750 West Reserve Dr.Kalispell, MT 59901

Phone: (406) 752-5411Fax: (406) 750-8765

Website:www.swankenterprises.com| |

Building Montana Dreamsfor over 50 Years

We are proud to serve as the general contractorfor this outstanding additionto Park County.


Livingston’s long history with health careBy Thomas E. Watson

Enterprise Staff Writer

Health care has always been an integral part of Livings-ton’s history. In the 19th century and even into the

early 20th century, hot springs were sought out to ease people’s pain.

The first-ever hospital in the Liv-ingston area opened in 1910 at Chico Hot Springs. An article from that peri-od in The Livingston Enterprise said “the climate alone insures a restora-tion of rugged strength and physical soundness, but is supplemented by medical care in cases where treatment is required.”

First Livingston HospitalLivingston got its own hospital a few

years later. In March of 1913, Dr. George A. Windsor founded the first hospital in Livingston. The hospital was a two-story brick building on Third Street that now serves as the Frontier Retirement Home.

Windsor boasted that his hospital, which had 40 rooms, was “magnificent and modernly equipped … ranking second to none in the state of Mon-tana.”

Some of that “modern” equipment included X-ray machines and operat-ing rooms. The biggest point of pride,

however, for Windsor and the Park Hospital was the maternity ward. Windsor was a big proponent for wom-en’s health.

“The sooner women learn that trained assistance and adequate equip-

ment is absolutely essential to good results in obstetrical cases, the sooner will our womanhood be relieved of a vast amount of unnecessary suffering.

“Incidentally, as a matter of dollars and cents, the institutional care of

obstetrical cases is not only better, but cheaper.”

The Park Hospital was not Livings-ton’s only hospital, however.

In 1928, Edith Lott — who had been an employee at Park Hospital — opened the Lott Hospital in the white mansion on the corner of Callender and Yellowstone streets. The house was built in the 1800s as a family home.

Lott opened the hospital with the help of Dr. George Townsend, who had previously worked at the hospital at Chico Hot Springs.

Lott is closely tied with health care in Livingston. She moved to Livings-ton after receiving her nursing degree in Fort Dodge, Iowa.

After working at the Park Hospital and starting her own, Lott finished her career as a manager of the Pioneer Rest Home and retired in 1958.

She died at age 93 in November of 1981.

The Lott Hospital was sold to Jose-phine Merrell for $30,000 in 1946, who said she purchased the building as an investment.

She remodeled the home then sold it to Drs. Robert E. Walker and William E. Harris for $40,000.

Enterprise file photo

This photo taken in the 1890s shows the Lott Hospital on the corner of Callen-der and Yellowstone streets when it was still used as a residence.

See History, Page 13

Enterprise file photo

This undated photo shows the original Park Hospital on Third Street, which now serves as the Frontier Retirement Home.


CongratulationsLivingston

HealthCare!

See us for all your insurance needs.Locally owned & operated.

Big Timber Office100 McLeod • P.O. Box 1609Big TimberOffice: 406-932-4014Fax: [email protected]

Livingston Office123 W. LewisLivingstonOffice: 406-222-0944Fax: [email protected]

Danna Lawellin Alice Senter Annemarie Quinto Milee Morrison

RESTAURANT SUPPLY & KITCHEN DESIGNPublic Welcome

Bravo!The Livingston HealthCarefacility is state-of-the-art.

Staff members and patients can feel safe and secure because the fire suppression

system is also state-of-the-art.

We were proud to have installed it.

114 West Lewis Street222-1413

Congratulationson your new

gem of a facility.


The new face of LHC: A room-by-room tour

By Hunter D’AntuonoEnterprise Staff Writer

On Oct. 10, during the open house and ribbon cutting cere-mony for the new Livingston HealthCare hospital, Victor

Robbins, vice president of First Inter-state Bank Commercial Loan Depart-ment, said the new facility is “the big-gest thing to happen in Livingston since the railroad came to town in the 1880s.” At 125,000 square feet, the new build-ing is no doubt an impressive collabora-tive feat of construction.

But what’s bigger is the impact the new facility will have on the quality of health care services for Park County residents and neighboring areas.

With the exception of the Shields Val-ley Clinic in Wilsall and UrgentCare in southern Livingston, the new building brings all of Livingston HealthCare’s services together in a single structure at 320 Alpenglow Lane, just east of town.

“Everyone is under one roof,” said Livingston HealthCare CEO Bren Lowe, on a tour of the facility with The Livingston Enterprise a couple of days before the open house, “It’s a one-stop shop.”

THE OUTSIDE Large windows fill every facet of the

outside of the building to take advan-tage of views of the Absaroka and the Crazy mountain ranges. The walls are composed of red bricks and gray stone-work. The roof line is punctuated by a series of dormers on the pitched, black shingled-roof.

“It’s a hospital, a clinic, but we don’t want it to look that way,” said Lowe. “We want it to look warm and inviting. We wanted it to fit Livingston. It has to compliment the beauty around it.”

All parking in the front of the build-ing is reserved for patients and visi-tors, while a separate lot around back accommodates the staff.

Tall LED lamps in the parking areas will ensure plenty of light after sun-down. All sidewalks encircling the building are curbless, to reduce trip-ping hazards and make wheeling in and out of the facility easier.

The anchoring architectural element is a broad wooden arch over the main entrance.

The arch design was inspired by The Gardiner Gateway Arch and Park County’s legacy as the original pathway to Yellowstone.

Mitch Goplen, Billings Clinic Vice President of Facility Services, said LHC’s new hospital has a much lower than average cost-per-square foot than other health care facilities at $208 a square foot, noting the average cost for

a new hospital is around $320 a square foot.

FIRST FLOORA driving force behind the interior

layout of the hospital was ensuring patients and visitors alike wouldn’t lose their way in the large facility.

“Hospitals and clinics are stereotypi-cally notoriously difficult to navigate,” said Lowe, so a lot of thought was put into an easily navigable floor plan.

The Glynna W. Freeman atrium is the first space a visitor sees through the main entrance. Enormous Russell Cha-tham paintings on loan from the Muse-um of the Rockies adorn the walls of the atrium.

The vast majority of the art adorn-ing the building is by local artists, said Lowe.

A cozy corner with a fireplace also occupies the front lobby area. All col-ors inside the building are earth tones, from the floors, to the walls to the fur-nishing, which create “a warm, healthy and inviting,” feel, said Lowe.

The lobby offers a convenient, cen-tralized patient registration area for all hospital services, with financial coun-selors offices adjacent to the registra-tion desks.

Public spaces and waiting rooms, with the exception of the dining area at the back of the building, run the length of the front side of the building, making it easy to access any first-floor medical area by walking one of two direc-tions. The waiting areas are illuminated by large amounts of natural light and feature chairs of differing heights, to accommodate a range of physical abili-ties.

A hall from the lobby leading to the back of the hospital connects to a sec-ond atrium holding a spacious and bright dining area, complete with buf-fet-style food counters. An opening in the wall reveals the kitchen.

The West Crawford and River Drive clinics are combined into one expan-sive unit on the first floor with 34 exam rooms. In the clinic area, all the exam rooms are grouped together, with phy-sician offices situated at the back of the building, but still immediately adjacent to where doctors will be examining patients.

“Physical proximity helps with com-

munication,” said Lowe of the clinic area’s layout.

The main hallway through the clinic area is marked with a different design pattern on the floor – again, for easy navigation. The other side of the build-ing features an expanded lab, a cardio-pulmonary unit for heart and lung patients and a Women’s Center, which features larger rooms for mammogra-phy and ultrasounds. A sub-waiting area within the center increases com-fort and privacy for female patients.

Enterprise photos by Hunter D’Antuono

One of Livingston HealthCare’s 25 patient rooms is pictured at the new hospital, complete with large windows and more space for loved ones to visit any time of day.

See Tour, Page 11

The second-floor surgery waiting area features a double-sided fireplace.


North 19th at Springhill Road 587-3406 www.cashmannursery.com

We were pleasedto bring beauty to theLivingston HealthCare

campus.At Cashman Nursery, our

business is making a customer’s property look cheery

and inviting.

We were proud to be chosen to help make the new Livingston

HealthCare campus grounds a thing of beauty.

Congratulations!The new Livingston HealthCare campus is

something we can all be proud of.

Congratulations from our Pharmacy StaffWe are proud of our dedicated pharmacists and the role they play in our community.

Now that we are a compounding pharmacy, our pharmacists can serve you at an even higher level.

Mike SchaubPharm D, RPh PharmacyManager

Leah MillerHead Pharm. Tech

Sheri QueenPharm. Tech

Melissa KingPharm. Tech

Sylvy WilsonPharm. Tech

Charles VondraPharm. Tech

Allison AthertonPharm. Tech

Jessica GravattPharm D, RPh

Kathy HigginsRPh

Chris Taylor

RPh

The quality and the extent of health care in a community is crucial to the residents of that community. It is often a deciding factor in a fam-ily’s decision to relocate to a new location or for a family to stay in a certain location. Park County can now boast a state-of-the-art health care campus that would make anyone confident about calling this area home. Their friends and relatives will be well served should a health issue arise.

1313 W. Park • Livingston • 222-7332Mon.-Fri. 8:30 a.m. to 7 p.m.

Sat. 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. Sun. 10 a.m. to 4 p.m.


Livingston Healthcare on their new home!

Everywhere you look when you visit us, you’ll see little touches that provide comfort and easy access for our se-

niors. Pair this with high-quality care, activities, and home-cooked meals and Caslen Living Center is the first choice

for Assisted Living in the Park County area.

Congratulations

It feels so good to be home!

1301 Wineglass Lane, off North N Street, LivingstonPhone 222-0797 www.caslenlc.com

EMERGENCY DEPARTMENT Patients bound for the emergency

room no longer need be exposed to the elements as they are unloaded from the ambulance, as the hospital includes a dedicated ambulance garage.

Adjacent to the ambulance garage is a decontamination room with shower heads and hoses, in the event a patient needs to be rinsed of toxic chemical agents before being moved further through the building.

Two trauma rooms occupy the space – one small, and one large. The latter is designed to accommodate any need-ed medical equipment “for someone who is in really bad shape,” said Lowe.

The emergency department contains six exam rooms, one of which is a “safe-hold room,” designed to prevent a patient attempting to inflict self-harm from doing so.

SECOND FLOOR A sweeping staircase leading from

the lobby takes visitors to the second level.

Twenty-five patient rooms cover a large portion of the upper floor. Mas-sive windows in every room let sun-light spill in and provide picturesque views of the Absarokas and Crazy mountain ranges.

Lowe said the rooms are fifty-per-cent larger than what two of the old hospitals patient rooms combined, which means plenty of space for loved ones to gather around. With no set vis-itor hours, friends and family can come see an in-patient any hour of the day.

Couches in the patient rooms con-vert into beds. A wardrobe is also available. Big TVs feature over 100 cable channels and the remote doubles as a nurse-call button.

Patient lifts can transport a patient from their bed to the bathroom, mak-ing moving around the room safer for both the patient and hospital staff.

The Family Birth Center provides two cozy birthing rooms and two post-partum rooms. Large bath tubs fill the bathrooms of the delivery rooms and elongated sinks specifically designed for bathing a newborn grace the coun-tertops.

One patient room is a negative pres-sure room, designed to eliminate risk of infection from a patient diagnosed with a contagious airborne disease such as tuberculosis or Ebola.

Two intensive care units are also available for patients in critical condi-tion.

A pair of operating rooms feature state-of-the-art boom systems, which keep lights and equipment off the floor, decluttering the space and allowing staff to work more efficient-ly. Refraction technology in the over-head operating room lights are improved to the point where surgeons hands don’t even cast a shadow on the patient.

Multiple flatscreens mounted to the walls and the booms can instantly dis-play anything a doctor needs to see, whether it’s an enlarged view from a scope feed or a copy of a patient’s medical records.

After surgery, each patient can expect the privacy and comfort of their own recovery room.

Clear on the other side of the second floor is an expansive outpatient reha-bilitation area, with spaces for physi-cal therapy, cardiac and pediatric rehabilitation.

The exercise equipment in the out-patient area will be made available to hospital staff for their own physical fitness needs outside of patient hours.


A sweeping staircase connects the spacious first-floor lobby to the second floor of the new LHC hospital.

Tour, from Page 9


We were proud to install the plumbingfor the new

Livingston HealthCare facility.

P 587-0969 • F 585-9458 • willplumb.com • Bozeman

New digs, new technology at Livingston HealthCareBy Hunter D’AntuonoEnterprise Staff Writer

Livingston Healthcare’s new facility is a 21st-century hospi-tal, not only because of the state-of-the-art medical tech-

nology housed within it, but the build-ing itself is engineered for the future.

Much of the large medical equip-ment, or “the big heavies,” as Livings-ton HealthCare’s lead biomedical engi-neer, Bill Bryce, likes to call them, won’t be moved from the old facility until just before the new hospital is open for business on Oct. 27. However, plenty of brand new medical technolo-gy comes as part of the new building.

The building’s two operating rooms and trauma bays feature state-of-the-art boom systems, which keep lights and equipment off the floor, de-clutter-ing the space and allowing staff to work more efficiently. Refraction technology in the overhead operating room lights are improved to the point where surgeons hands don’t even cast a shadow on the patient.

Multiple flatscreens mounted to the walls and the booms can instantly dis-play anything a doctor needs to see, whether it’s an enlarged view from a scope feed or a copy of a patient’s medical records.

The hospital features an improved

pair of decontamination rooms for sterilizing medical instruments. The two rooms are linked by a double-doored instrument cleaning machine. Dirty instruments enter one side and come out clean on the other.

“At the end of the day, it’s like a dish-

washer on steroids,” Bryce quipped. New X-ray equipment in the imaging

department utilizes digital radiogra-phy or “direct capture” technology. X-rays can appear on screen immedi-ately after being shot, much like the way modern digital cameras allow

photographers to instantly view their images, versus the lag time inherent to processing film.

A pneumatic tube system, not unlike the ones used at drive-thru bank tell-ers, allows staff to swiftly transport small items, such as blood samples, up to 20 mph throughout the hospital. Five tube stations are located in key departments.

“It sounds like a cannon when it goes off,” joked Bryce.

The system saves time by reducing how often personnel must hand-deliver time-sensitive samples between far-flung sections of the building.

SECURITY Advanced security technologies are

also weaved throughout the facility. “We’ve upgraded security across the

board,” said Bryce. Security cameras continually moni-

tor all “critical areas” inside the build-ing and out, and doors to medical areas are secured by a badge-access system. Hospital staff will carry badges that, when held up to a sensor, unlock doors. Every badge is assigned a unique num-ber, so every entry is recorded.

“We’re trying to get away from this,” said Bryce, fishing a chock-full key ring from his pocket.


A state-of-the-art boom system holding operating lights and flatscreen moni-tors is pictured in one of the hospital’s new operating rooms on Oct. 10.

See New digs, Page 15


Your new facilitY issomething we can all

be proud of.

Huppert, SwindleHurSt, & woodruff, p.C.law offices

420 s. second st. | livingston | (406) [email protected] | [email protected]

Congratulationsto livingston healthcare

The Lott Hospital stayed in operation until Feb. 28, 1955 when 14 patients were moved by ambulance to the new Livingston Memorial Hospital, which opened on the same day. In 1957, the Park Hospital became the Park Clinic. The clinic is now in the Edgewater building on River Drive.

New Age in health careLivingston Memorial Hospital has

been the town’s sole health care provid-er for the last 60 years.

After the Lott Hospital closed in 1955 and the Park Hospital became the Park Clinic a few years later, Livingston Memorial Hospital has provided for patients since Katherine Lloyd of Butte had surgery the morning of Feb. 28 to become the hospital’s first patient.

When the hospital opened in 1955 times were different, and rates were unfathomable in today’s financial cli-mate.

A bed in a four-bed ward cost $9 and a bed in semi-private rooms — rooms with two beds — cost $11. There were also options for single rooms, where a stan-dard single room went for $12.50 and a single room with a bathroom cost $15. A Feb. 24, 1955 article in the Livingston Enterprise also reported that, “two tele-phone lines (had) been installed at the hospital. The numbers are 112 and 113.”

In operation for 60 years, Livingston

Memorial Hospital has tried to stay on the leading edge of medicine for decades. In 1980, the hospital became the first health care facility in Montana to use a “real-time” ultra sound machine. Then again in 1996, the hospi-tal added a true spiral CT-Scan, and again, that was the first machine of its kind to be used in Montana.

In 1998, Livingston Memorial Hospital merged with the original health care provider in Livingston, the Park Clinic (which started as the Park Hospital) to expand their services, officially chang-ing its name from Livingston Memorial Hospital to Livingston HealthCare.

The need to expand their services has greatly increased over the last decade or more, leading to the construction of a new building that could house all of the hospital’s services under one roof.

The new hospitalExecutives at Livingston HealthCare

realized the need for expansion and hired a consulting firm in 2003, and 12 years of hard work are about to pay off.

“It is so rewarding. It is an amazing feeling,” Livingston HealthCare Board of Directors Chairperson Michelle Becker said. “There’ve been a lot of challenges along the way, but the reward of going through all of this is fantastic. It’s going to be wonderful for this community. It’s an amazing feeling. It’s hard to articulate.

History, from Page 7

Historical Timeline1910: Percie Knowles, the owner of Chico Hot Springs Hotel, transforms the building into a medical facility.

1913: Park Hospital was founded in Livingston.

1928: Edith Lott founded the Lott Hospital on the corner of Callender Street and Yellowstone Street.

1946: Josephine Merrell buys the Lott Hospital Building for $30,000. She did extensive renovations to the building, then sold it to Drs. Robert Walker and William Harris for $40,000.

1955: Livingston Memorial Hospital opens on Feb. 28, 1955 with 14 patients transferred from Lott Hos-pital to the new, 55-bed facility.

1978: Livingston Memorial Hospital became not-for-profit.

1980: The hospital added the first “real-time” ultrasound machine in the state of Montana.

1998: Livingston Memorial Hospital

merged with Park Clinic and began employing physicians.

1998: Wayne and Rosalene Peterson bequeath 29 acres of land, which the hospital sold and used funds to help build a new hospital building.

2001: Received “Critical Access Hospital (CAH)” designation from federal government and changed name to Livingston HealthCare.

2002: Livingston HealthCare signed a management services agreement with Billings Clinic.

2003: Consulting firm hired to help determine future needs of Livings-ton HealthCare.

2007: The Ted and Georgeann Wat-son family announced their intent to donate a 20-acre parcel of land on the east side of town to be used for a new health care facility.

2013: Broke ground on new hospital facility.

Oct. 27, 2015: New Livingston HealthCare hospital opens.

See History, Page 14


“This is a game-changer for Livingston. We already have a tremendous community here and such a draw. People who could live anywhere live here, and so when you look at what this new medi-cal campus is going to do for opportunities for growth … we are in the process of interviewing for our cardiologist. This will be the first time in the history of Livingston that we’ve had a full time cardiologist employed right here.”

The process of getting this “game-changing” hospital built started with the acquisition of lands.

Wayne and Rosalene Peterson bequeathed 29 acres of land to the hospital, but that ended up not being the site of the new building.

“That land is over by the armory, which is now known as Ridge View Trails subdivision,” Becker said. “That 29 acres, although it would have been ample in size and very usable for us, the location being on the opposite side of the railroad tracks from the main arteries of I-90 and Highway 89 South, we felt like that was not the location we should use for our new facilities.”

The hospital sold those lands and dedicated the money to be used toward the new building, and in

2007, Ted and Georgeann Watson came to the rescue. They not only donated a 20-acre parcel of land on the east side of town to be used for the new facility, but they also allowed the hospital to pick out which 20-acre parcel would suit them best.

“We had to make certain we were outside of the 500-year flood plain,” said Becker.

“It opened up another opportunity and made it so we had something firm to work with.”

Without the Watsons’ donation, the new hospital would still be years away.

Instead, because of their generosi-ty, Livingston now has a new hospi-tal.

History, from Page 13

“This is a game-changer for Livingston.”

- Michelle Becker, Livingston HealthCare Board of Directors Chairwoman

Congratulations to Livingston HealthCare

504 E. Callender 222-3037

Your new facility is an impressive asset to the community.

Your foresight and your perseverance have led to a state-of-the-art health care campus that

every resident of this area would feel confident in when receiving medical care here.

Congratulations on a job well done.

From all of us at

— A trusted title company since 1983 —

A tip of the hat to Livingston Healthcare

Your new facility will ensure that our residents, and everyone in

Park County, will receive state of the art medical care.

Congratulations!

DiAmonD K LoDgeWhere your family is ours

1200 W. montana | 222-0605 | www.dklodge.com

RIGHT: Pictured is Dr. George A. Windsor, who founded Livingston’s

first hospital in March 1913.


Congratulations

406-222-2531 | Franzen-Davis.comBox 683 | livingston, Mt 59047

on the openingof your beautiful

new location!

INFORMATION TECHNOLOGYNursing and other direct-care staff

will enjoy the convenience of proprie-tary smartphone-like devices, which will allow them to text and call each other and their patients from wherev-er they might be.

“It’s making a mobile workforce more mobile,” said Bryce.

Over a dozen “COWS” or “computers on wheels,” will also be utilized by staff around the building. A Wifi net-work also reaches every nook for con-venient Internet access. Massive bun-dles of cords streaming from towers of servers in the Information Systems department keep all systems intercon-nected.

“It’s a highly integrated building,” said John Hetland, Construction Man-ager for the architecture and engi-neering firm on the hospital project.

ENERGY The third floor of the building or,

“The Penthouse” as Bryce termed it, serves as central command for a

wealth of energy-saving technology. A geothermal energy system will

cool the building. Groundwater, which hovers around

52 degrees, is pumped from a well, after which it’s used to fill coils that chill air in the duct system. The geo-thermal is also used to cool the hospi-tal’s MRI machine, which produces tons of heat through its operation.

At an annual energy-savings cost of $100,000, Hetland anticipates a three-year return investment on the geother-mal system.

Natural gas, meanwhile, is the build-ing’s primary heating agent.

Motion sensors and timers on the lighting throughout the building ensure electricity conservation. Thanks to motion sensors, even the brightness of the low-energy LED parking lot lamps only increase when a car or pedestrian passes beneath them.

“This has been future-proofed where possible,” said Bryce of the new facili-ty. “We were really at critical mass in the building we were at.”

By Hunter D’AntuonoEnterprise Staff Writer

A key piece of technology improving Livingston HealthCare services is a new Siemens MRI scanner.

With a price tag of about $1.2 million dollars, the machine is, by a large margin, the most expensive piece of equipment in the building, said Livingston HealthCare CEO Bren Lowe.

“This puts you on par with a uni-versity hospital as far as imaging,” added Lucas Thompson, an applica-tion specialist for the MRI unit.

The machine features enhanced image quality, faster image acqui-sition and a user-friendly software interface.

Greg Christianson, an LHC radi-ology technologist, who specializes in magnetic resonance, marveled

at the image quality during a train-ing session with the new device Wednesday afternoon.

The opening, or “bore” of the machine is larger, making it more comfortable for patients undergo-ing a scan. Patients can also have their favorite playlist played from their smartphone over speakers in the MRI room. The machine, when in operation, is also 70 percent quieter than the hospital’s current machine, said Laura Caes, Imaging Services Manager for LHC.

Caes said the MRI machine is the largest addition to her department and LHC’s partnership with Bill-ings Clinic will only expand the scope of studies they can provide.

“It’s a top of the line MRI sys-tem,” Caes said. “I’m excited about the additional studies we can pro-vide the community.”

ALSO IN TECH: NEW MRI

New digs, from Page 12


Livingston HealthCare’s new “Siemens” MRI scanner is pictured on Oct. 8


Moving patients on Move In DayBy Liz Kearney

Enterprise Staff Writer

There may be bigger objects to move, but the most important are the patients Liv-ingston HealthCare will be caring for as they prepare for their official Oct. 27

moving day. Director of Nursing Lori Koby is in charge of

moving any patients who may have stayed over-night in the 13th Street hospital the night of Oct. 26. And while elective surgeries will not be sched-uled immediately prior to the move, there’s still a chance there will be between five and 10 patients in house, Koby said, especially if any expectant mothers go into labor in the days before the move.

And Mary Boyd, Family Birth Center Manager, said she does have a few moms due around Oct. 27. Koby, who has been LHC’s Director of Nurs-ing since January, actually has had not one but two previous hospital moves in her career, one in Washington and another in Oregon.

The LHC move is going to be easier, she said, because there will be brand new beds at the new facility — in previous moves Koby has been involved in, an extra leg of the move included mov-ing empty hospital beds, setting them up, and then moving patients and repeating the process until all the beds were moved. Staff have been working on the move’s components for more than a year, Koby said, and here’s the plan for Tuesday morning: The patient-moving staff will meet in the old cafeteria at 5 a.m. The night shift will remain on shift at the old hospital, and the day shift will report to Alpenglow Lane, ready to receive the patients.

The patients will be moved according to two fac-tors, Koby said — acuity, or how serious the condi-tion is, and by nurse, so that one nurse doesn’t receive all his or her patients at one time.

Five area emergency service providers have vol-unteered ambulances. They are the Livingston City Fire and Rescue, Paradise Valley Fire and EMS, Gardiner Volunteer Fire and Ambulance, Yellow-stone National Park, and the Big Timber Volunteer Fire Department, Koby said.

In addition, to make the most of a potential train-ing opportunity, Park County’s Disaster and Emer-

gency Services director Greg Coleman will be leading a crew that will be observing the move as if it were a practice evacuation drill.

“He’ll time us, watch us, see if everyone knows their roles and if they have the tools they need,” Koby said, “and then there will be a debriefing” to see what went well and areas that could have been improved.

Patients will be wheeled in their beds to the ambulance loading dock, transferred to the gur-ney, then driven to the new hospital. Once there, a waiting nurse will perform a quick assessment, and the patients will be moved to their new rooms. To facilitate the move, visitors won’t be allowed at Alpenglow Lane until 10 a.m., Koby said.

For a few hours at least, LHC will be doubled up in departments. The old Emergency Room will be kept open Tuesday morning, and the lab may be needed, so it will remain in place, too.

At the end of the move, staff will place large signs outside the newly-emptied former LHC building to direct people to the new hospital. Signs on Interstate 90 will be changed, and the signage in town as well. Koby, whose nursing background is in trauma

nursing, is taking the move in stride. She said the more chaotic a situation becomes, the calmer she gets. She said LHC has employees who have never worked anywhere but in the old hospital, and some are a little anxious about working in a new building.

And student nurses from Montana State Universi-ty will be on hand to observe, too, for educational purposes.

“After all, how often does a hospital move?” Koby said.

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We’re proud to be a part of thisCommemorative Edition

And we congratulate Livingston HealthCareon the state-of-the-art facility.

Your new campus is something everyPark County resident can be proud of.

With the new facility, health care for the 21st Centuryhas become a reality for community members.


Before patients are moved, LHC stocked its new hospi-tal’s warehouse with medical supplies. LHC’s David Lich-te is pictured organizing supplies inside the warehouse on Oct. 11.


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Livingston officials reflect on the benefits of the new hospitalBy Samantha Hill Enterprise Staff Writer

On the first day of the Liv-ingston HealthCare open house, people in the commu-nity were excited to see the

new hospital. But Livingston offi-cials have been anticipating the hos-pital opening for much longer.

Livingston Fire and Rescue Chief Ben Coffman is looking forward to the updated hospital and how it will benefit his team.

Coffman said the old ambulance dock was on an incline and would

often hurt medics’ backs as they assisted patients. Now with the new facility, the ambulance can back into a climate-controlled facility with a flat surface.

Coffman also noted that the ambu-lance dock will siphon out all of ambulance exhaust fumes, which he said will be better for people’s health.

Also, the medics will be able to access the ICU with few difficulties, he said.

In addition, Coffman said he was able to work closely with hospital officials to find the best and safest

routes in case of a fire on the hospi-tal premises.

Former City Manager Ed Meece, who worked with the hospital on a number of projects, said the new facility will be great for the com-munity and its economic develop-ment.

Livingston Chamber of Commerce Executive Director Lou Ann Nelson agreed, and said the new hospital will bring Livingston health care into the future.

“The completion of this new facili-ty may act as a springboard to bring greater growth to the area by

attracting new residents and expand-ing business opportunities,” Nelson wrote in an email.

Livingston City Commission Chair-man James Bennett said he also believes it will bring more money into the community.

Bennett believes the hospital will bring not only growth in the city but also in the area around the facility.

Other community members have said many similar things since the LHC open house, remarking about the building’s beauty while noting the facility seems more comfortable than the previous one.

Dozens of contractors worked on the new hospitalBy Samantha Hill Enterprise Staff Writer

Many people are unaware of the pieces that go into to making a building as large and grand and LHC’s new hospital.

There were 45 contractors and subcon-tractors on the project, including six from the Mid-west and the Northwest, ranging in specialties from architectural work to sprinkler systems.

Jeff Halsey, job superintendent for Swank Enter-prises, the general contractor that built the new facili-ty, said he works on projects this big fairly often and that the amount of supplies used to build a structure like LHC’s is amazing.

Halsey said they put in 12,000 pieces of sheet rock and “miles and miles” of wiring.

While the architectural firm Erdman Company cre-ated the plans to make the LHC building, many sub-contractors deserve credit for their role in creating the beautiful building.

For example, walking into the hospital, people will

see the wood beams that Western Wood Structures, an Oregon-based company, created. Western Wood Struc-ture’s Doug Turner said the company shipped 10,000

to 15,000 pounds worth of wood, which took six to eight weeks to arrive at the hospital.

The trees used for the beams were Douglas fir from Oregon.

Another example of a subcontractor’s contribution is Mountain Fire Protection, of Columbus, which pro-vided and installed 1,300 automatic sprinklers for the new hospital. The owner of the company, Michael Georgeson, said that was a typical amount of sprin-klers for a building that size.

Mountain Fire Protection employees, who worked a total of 1,100 hours on the project for the past year, just recently finished setting up the last of the sprin-klers.

Georgeson said the most interesting part of the pro-cess was the touch of adding flush-dial sprinklers, which typically cost more but are more esthetically pleasing.

Contractors who installed elevators, pneumatic tub-ing, landscaping and acoustical ceilings are other examples of the many contractors that made the new Livingston Healthcare building complete.

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Contractors work under the warm shelter of tarps on the outside of the new LHC hospital, on Feb. 26, 2015.


By Jasmine Hall Enterprise Staff Writer

Livingston HealthCare’s future new facility holds more bene-fits for both patients and medical staff than the old

hospital can offer.LHC Medical Director Dr. Scott

Coleman described the advantages the new facility will provide for its medical staff. The most obvious ben-efit, Coleman said, is the consolida-tion of the medical staff in one cen-tral location.

“It provides an opportunity for a collaboration and gives (medical staff) the ability to really work together and practice relying on each other’s different areas of exper-tise,” Coleman said. “It will be so extenuated in this new facility.”

With the old LHC facilities, the hospital location and clinic are divid-ed into different areas. The new medical campus will allow for great-er accessibility and transferring of information between medical staff.

“The opportunity to be able to attend to an inpatient need all under the same roof will be so much easi-er,” Coleman explained. “If there’s staff that has a question (they’re closer), verses having to get into a car and (driving) to the hospital.”

Coleman said the distance between

the different LHC locations has been a challenge, but the new facility will relieve this obstacle for the doctors and other medical staff.

“There’ll no longer be a distance in outdoor separation between outpa-tient care and hospital inpatient care,” Coleman said. “Through the course of the day, we’ll be able to attend to both needs — the clinic and hospital — with much more efficien-cy.”

And for patients, this will mean the process of healing will be more effi-cient.

Coleman said this will mean more attentive physicians, as well as the ability to more effectively adapt with the changes in patients’ health status.

“The needs of the nursing staff and patients, and conditions — we’ll be able to attend to those in a time frame that is much faster than we’ve been able to attempt,” he said.

Livingston HealthCare Family Phy-sician Ben Flook, who has been at LHC for 18 years, agreed, saying the new facility will provide a healing environment and promote better medical care. The new hospital’s accessibility is also a benefit Flook sees.

“The patient flow, getting them in and out of the facility and examina-tion rooms will be so much more eas-

ier and efficient,” he said. “It will be much more conducive to communica-tion with our colleagues.”

In addition to the improvements in centralized facilities and medical staff, another benefit of the new facility is updated equipment and medical rooms. Coleman said the old LHC facilities were built in the 1960s and have been a hindrance to medi-cal staff.

Updates include improved technol-ogy in MRI capabilities, modern-day radiology and cardiac monitoring that the old hospital couldn’t provide.

“We have a facility that is wired to the high-tech needs,” Coleman said. “… It is truly wired for 2015.”

In addition, there have been updates to the rooms themselves, allowing medical staff a more effec-tive way of treating patients.

Flook mentioned lighting, space and access to supplies as other bene-fits of the new hospital facility.

“Those are all important and are going to improve,” Flook said. “There’s a lot of small tangibles that, when they add up, are really impor-tant.”

“Our operating rooms are now very laid out from an architectural stand-point that relies on what has worked for the last 10 to 20 years in medi-cine,” Coleman added. “The entire design of the shape, the space of

rooms — from the operating room, to the inpatient room, to the clinic room — have a tremendous amount of experience and data behind (them) on what the optimal design is.”

Updates in technology and archi-tectural design are vital not only for doctors and nurses, but are a benefit for patients as well.

“These are essentials of managing particular aspects of medicine,” Coleman said of the updates. “We’ve had those, we’ve utilized that equip-ment effectively in the past… but this new capability will provide so much for real-time access and quali-ty.”

The medical staff are eager to work in their new digs.

“It’s overwhelming, I think, from the medical staff throughout the entire hospital staff,” Coleman said. “There’s overwhelming enthusiasm and excitement.”

“We’re all very excited,” Flook said. “I can kind of sense the excite-ment building. This has been long awaited, and we’re ready for the move.”

He added, “We realize our current facilities are inadequate and are really one of the big limiting factors in the quality of care we can provide right now. Now, with the new facility, we can provide better care for our community.”

New facility a big benefit for both patients and medical staff


Parks Reece hopes mural brings a lift to hospital patientsBy Jasmine Hall Enterprise Staff Writer

Entering the lobby on the clinic side of Livingston Health-Care’s future hospital loca-tion, hospital staff, clients

and visitors will be greeted by an 8-foot by 12-foot mural painted by local artist Parks Reece.

The mural, titled “Goin’ Fishing,” is an acrylic painting featuring Reece’s signature surrealistic themes. It fea-tures a grizzly cub holding a fly rod and kingfisher bird while riding a cut-throat trout in the sky.

“It’s sort of this surrealism using wildlife and fish,” Reece said. “And I call it fine art with a sense of humor.”

Reece, who has prior experience working with murals, such as the “East Meets West” mural at the Liv-ingston Civic Center, was happy to paint the mural for LHC.

“I wanted to have something in the hospital that made you feel good,” he said. “Because you don’t particularly want to be in a hospital.”

He said art can help people “take the edge off” their immediate prob-lems.

“I felt that this would help people with their problems,” he said. “I believe that about art anyway — music, literature, painting — it helps people. If something makes you feel

good, then your problems are a little less pronounced.”

With the surrealistic subject matter, viewers are asked to interpret what is occurring in the painting. The unusual main charter of the grizzly riding a cutthroat is humorous but also puz-zling.

“The painting asks more questions

than it answers,” Reece laughed. “… It leaves you to go, ‘Wow, wow,’ and just makes you think — puts you into a little revery, a little dream.”

The supporting characters — the wildlife at the bottom of the mural, including a raccoon, elk, marmot, deer and foxes — all look at the pecu-liar grizzly riding his airborne catch-

of-the-day. All except two animals — the raccoon, which is looking back at the viewer, and the fox, which is run-ning away.

“There’s a little story, a narrative,” Reece explained. “… You see all the little animals situated in the valley, they’re all looking up going, ‘Wow, what is going on?’ ’Cuz just like the (viewer), they’ve never seen that.”

Reece also decided to add in the fur-ry foreground creatures because of the mural’s location in the pediatrics waiting area of the hospital. He placed the animals at eye-level for the children, so they could be entertained.

“They’ll be little children looking eye-to-eye with the animals,” he said. “… It serves the purpose of the pic-ture, but then having the animals eye-to-eye with the kids will maybe take a little pressure off the moms and dads.”

He also wanted the animals to be educational for children, so he kept them realistic.

“I try to make the anatomy true to form of what the animal is,” Reece said. “And so I anticipate they’ll ask questions — ‘What is this?’ — and then they’ll maybe learn a little bit of something, gain an appreciation for animals.”

ENTERPRISE� t h e l i v i n g s t o n

�

401 So. Main • 222-2000 • www.livingstonenterprise.com

We applaud you — your new facility is state-of-the-art.

Congratulations to the LHC staff, the board of directors and the contractor and subcontractorson a splendid addition to Park County. Thanks to your efforts, the new campus is impressive.


Livingston artist Parks Reece is pictured in front of his partially finished ani-mal mural on Sept. 27.

See Mural, Page 22


By Jasmine Hall Enterprise Staff Writer

Billings Clinic has broad experi-ence with rural health care partnerships, helping commu-nities grow their hospital facil-

ities. Now, through its partnership with Livingston HealthCare, Billings Clinic brings that experience to LHC’s new facility.

With connections to financial aid as well as vast construction and product knowledge, Billings Clinic formed the partnership with LHC to help meet the area’s medical needs, while strengthen-ing its connection with rural communi-ties.

“Billings Clinic has, for a long time, had a big commitment to rural health care,” Billings Clinic Chief Executive Officer Nicholas Wolter said.

Billings Clinic helps manage critical access hospitals in 11 communities, but LHC is one of only three facilities — including Beartooth Billings Clinic in Red Lodge and Stillwater Billings Clinic in Columbus — that Billings Clinic has partnered with to build a new hospital.

The partnership between Billings Clinic and LHC started in 2002, when Billings Clinic first helped with the

financial issues a new facility posed. Like with the Red Loge hospital, Bill-

ings Clinic was able to use its resources to obtain government funding through the United States Department of Agri-culture to help LHC finance a future location.

“It allowed us to find ways to get funding in place that would allow a new hospital to be built,” Wolter explained.

Long before the Billings Clinic and LHC boards established an official rela-tionship, physicians in both locations worked closely with each other.

“There’s been a strong history of rela-tionships between the physicians who practice in Livingston and the physi-cians who practice at Billings Clinic,” Wolter explained, adding that when he practiced as a pulmonary critical care physician he worked closely with doc-tors in Livingston with mutual patients. “The relationship’s been a long one, (and) I think it’s been a good one.”

Wolter said the partnership between Billings Clinic and LHC has been mutu-ally beneficial.

“It’s just part of how Billings Clinic looks at our role in Montana working with a lot of rural clinics,” he said.

For Billings Clinic, benefits from the relationship with LHC include strength-ening its footprint across Montana, as well as increasing its ability to treat patients from small communities who might have to travel long distances for advanced care.

Billings Clinic Foundation President Jim Duncan added that by helping smaller communities whose patients need more advanced care than LHC can

provide, it keeps residents from having to travel outside Montana.

“We’re doing more and more things in our organization, in Billings, that keep people from having to leave our state,” he said.

Aside from the business benefits, Billings Clinic also benefits from the streamlining of the electronic exchange of information, which makes patient care more efficient.

“One of the unique things that has evolved with our relationships with the communities we work with is every-body’s on the same electronic health record,” Wolter said. “So if a patient needs to be seen by us, we would have access to the record (in Livingston) and vice versa.”

LHC will also see advantages of part-nering with Billings Clinic. With prior experience and resources that are accessible to a larger organizations, partnering with the Clinic has meant more financial support for LHC — such as facilitating contact with the USDA — and supplying knowledge of hospital design and management of construc-tion.

In addition, the Clinic’s broad experi-ence with building health care facilities as well as its relationship with other health care organizations, such as the Mayo Clinic, means more resources for LHC.

“We shared every ounce of knowl-edge that we had about design, experi-ence, construction experience, proto-cols,” Duncan said. “We opened up our playbook if you will, to this community so that they could have every opportu-

nity to learn from ours.” Also, LHC benefits from Billings Clin-

ic’s equipment purchasing experience.“Our purchasing power and our prod-

uct knowledge is strong,” Mitch Goplen, Billings Clinic’s vice president of Facili-ty Services and Construction, said. “And what we’re able to do is bring that to the table so when end users are try-ing to make a decision on a product, we already have that list of vendors and pricing structures. So we’re able to make that decision with informed infor-mation.”

Billings Clinic is also keeping LHC potential for growth in mind.

“To have a modern facility where the best, outstanding care can be given is the main goal,” Wolter said. “But we think this will help, as we need to recruit more doctors to Livingston, be more attractive.”

Over time, as doctors retire and LHC grows, Livingston will need to appeal to physicians, as well as expand in what LHC can treat.

“We expect that there may be, over time, some new specialists added who can provide care here in Livingston,” he said. “So people don’t have to leave Liv-ingston for Billings or Bozeman. The goal really is to grow the services avail-able here, in Livingston, to serve this area.”

“The building is set up not only to meet the demands of today but also the needs of the future,” Goplen said. “Right now in this facility we can expand the clinic, we can expand the surgical area, and the other parts of the facility as growth takes place.”

LHC benefits from partnership with

Billings Clinic


By Dwight Harriman Enterprise Staff Writer

To be sure, the lab in Livingston HealthCare’s new facility east of Livingston will have some great new equipment. And Kathy Blair, director of LHC’s Ancillary Services,

is excited about it.Ancillary Services covers not only lab work, but

everything from imaging, to food and nutrition ser-vices, to home health and hospice.

But what excites Blair the most about the new lab is the sheer amount of space it will provide for its 11 employees and their equipment.

Elbow room“Just the fact that we have elbow room and can

move around is going to be huge,” Blair said during a recent tour of the new lab facilities.

The new lab has about 1,600 square feet compared to a mere 1,100 at the old hospital.

What’s more, the new lab facilities will all be in one place. At the old hospital, the lab was scattered throughout various unconnected rooms, and Blair’s office was clear across the street from the main lab rooms.

And the space they did have was tight, with equip-ment purchases based on how much room they had.

“When you’re in a cramped space, you buy equip-ment that fits,” Blair said.

The new lab’s spacious accommodations include a main lab room that will house the blood bank, hema-tology testing, blood coagulation testing, urinalysis, and serology (antigen and antibody testing); a microbiology room for doing cultures, like those for

throat infections and wounds; and not one, but two private blood draw rooms — compared to the one blood draw room at the old hospital.

LHC CEO Bren Lowe said the new lab’s location will make things more convenient for patients and that overall, “efficiency is greatly enhanced.”

New equipmentAlthough Blair is enthused about the extra space,

she is also excited about some new gear the lab is getting — specifically, the Dimension EXL.

The EXL is a chemistry analyzer that replaces the older version — a Dimension Vista — the lab had. While the Dimension EXL is a big machine, it fits comfortably in the new lab’s main room. Blair point-

ed out its features while she ran tests recently on the machine to get it ready for duty.

The EXL can do everything from the familiar analyses you would get, say, during a blood profile at LHC health fairs — cholesterol levels, and kidney, liver and pancreas functions, etc.) — to determining levels of ammonia, alcohol and many types of drugs, like acetaminophen.

An acetaminophen test might be conducted for “some small child that’s gotten into a bottle of Tyle-nol,” Blair said.

The huge machine is almost completely automat-ed. Lab techs place a sample of whatever needs to be tested, complete with a bar code associated with the patient it came from, into the machine, hit some buttons, and it does its job.

“It’s really kind of hands-free,” Blair said.The EXL currently can conduct about 50 different

types of tests, but more can be added if needed.“We’re hoping it will provide us with some cost

savings over the one we have” as well as increased efficiency, Blair said.

Tube runThe new hospital also has an innovative way the

lab can quickly get samples to test: a pneumatic tube system. The system, which Blair said will be heavily used by the lab, connects to the emergency room, the surgery floor and the clinic, and can send samples to the lab in seconds.

“We’ll be receiving a lot of our samples that way,” Blair said.

“I’m excited about all of it,” Blair said of the new lab shortly before it opened for business. “… I’m ready to get moved in.”

Empty test tubes are pictured next to the lab’s new Dimension EXL chemistry analyzer.

New lab offers space employees need for work

“Just the fact that we have elbow room and can move around is going to be huge.” – Kathy Blair, director of

LHC’s Ancillary Services

Kathy Blair, director of Livingston HealthCare’s Ancillary Services, stands in the new lab next to the Dimension EXL, a brand-new chemistry analyzer that will replace the hospital’s old one.

Enterprise photos by Hunter D’Antuono


By Liz Kearney Enterprise Staff Writer

Livingston HealthCare’s new facility will bring the hospi-tal cafeteria to new heights — literally. When the kitchen

and dining area move into the new facility, it will be moving out of the basement of the old hospital and into the ground level of the new building, with the atrium soaring above it.

“It really doesn’t feel like a hospi-tal,” LHC’s Food and Nutrition Servic-es Manager Jessica Wilcox said in the weeks prior to the big move.

The new food service area will be much more than a stereotypical hospi-tal cafeteria. With a new name — Café Fresh — Wilcox hopes the place will become a destination for a meal, a snack, or just an espresso, in its own right. The café is open to the public and accessible from the main entrance without having to enter patient areas.

The new dining area includes seat-ing for 45 to 55. There is a visible “action station,” where a chef will prepare foods and be able to interact with diners. And the station, when the dining area is closed, is designed to do double-duty as a space for small cook-ing classes, Wilcox said. The classes

can be offered, for example, to patients with diabetes or cardiac issues who need to learn how to pre-pare meals for specific health issues.

Café Fresh will continue LHC’s par-ticipation in a program called Farm to

Institution, making a priority of sourcing as much food as possible from local and area producers, featur-ing products from local growers, ranchers and coffee roasters. Wilcox said purchasing from local vendors

helps “foster a strong and self-reliant food system in Park County.”

Supporting local food sources helps keep food production organizations profitable and in business in the local area, which supports local sustainabil-ity, she said.

“The more we can purchase locally, the more we can keep local producers in business — and that food will be there,” Wilcox said.

Hospital patients will enjoy the same foods served at Café Fresh, Wil-cox said. Patients will be able to phone in their meal requests and order off the same menu available to the public.

The menu features fresh, minimally processed foods. Snack foods will be healthful items like trail mix and chips that are baked, not fried. There’s no self-serve soda dispenser, Wilcox said, nor are there unhealthy ingredients in the foods like trans fats or high-fructose corn syrup.

And even desserts have nutritious vegetables tucked in. Wilcox shared a recipe (see below) for a dense choco-late cake from Bettie Shomper, one of LHC’s chef coordinators, that contains a surprising, healthful ingredient.

“You honestly can’t tell there are a lot of roasted beets in there,” Wilcox laughed.

Cafeteria takes a fresh look at ‘hospital food’

Chocolate Beet CakeYields 16 servingsCake: 1 ½ cups granulated sugar1 cup cooked, sliced beets½ cup vegetable oil3 large eggs1 tsp. vanilla¾ cup all-purpose flour¾ cup whole wheat pastry four1 ½ tsp. baking soda¾ cup cocoa powder½ tsp salt

Filling: ¼ cup half-and-half whipped into still peaks½ cups cream cheese, softened¼ cup unsalted butter1 cup powdered sugar1 tsp vanilla

Frosting: ¾ cup bittersweet chocolate chips6 tbsp. unsalted butter, softened7 tbsp. heavy cream1 ½ tsp. vanilla2 cups powdered sugar

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Grease and line with parchment two 9” square pans.

For the cake: In a bowl, cream butter and oil. Drain beets and reserve ½ cup of juice. In a blender, puree the beets with the reserved liquid. Add to creamed mixture along with eggs and vanilla. Blend well. In a separate bowl, whisk together the flour, baking soda, cocoa powder and salt. Add to the creamed mixture and mix for 30 seconds. Scrape the sides and bottom of the bowl, turn the mixer on high and beat for two minutes. Divide between the prepared pans and bake for 25 minutes or until a

toothpick comes out clean. Remove from the oven and cool for 10 minutes. Remove cake from pans, peel off the paper and cool completely on rack. Cut each cake in half to make four 9”x4” strips.

For the filling: Whip the cream until it holds a stiff peak. In a small bowl, mix the softened cream cheese and butter together. Whisk the powdered sugar alternately with the creamed mixture into the whipped cream, gradually in small amounts. Stir in the vanilla and chill thoroughly before using.

For the frosting: Melt the chocolate and butter in a saucepan over low heat. Stir until smooth. Remove from the heat and pour into a mixing bowl. Add the cream, vanilla and powdered sugar. Beat with an electric mixer until smooth and creamy.

To assemble: Spread the filling on the tops of three of the layers of cake and stack four layers high, topping with the remaining cake layer. Wrap tightly in plastic wrap and refrigerate for several hours.

Remove from the refrigerator and frost.


The atrium holding the hospital’s spacious and bright dining area is pictured on Oct. 5.

Mural, from Page 19

Surrealistic, entertaining and educa-tional factors are not the only aspects Reece wanted to include in the art-work. He also wanted beauty.

“I think beauty elevates (people) and makes them feel good,” Reece said. “So I try to make the landscape and the fish beautiful.”

To come up with the concept for “Goin’ Fishing” Reece spent his time taking walks and pondering.

“I would go on walks and just look around at the sky and the animals, mountains, and just think,” he recalled. “And it just eventually dawned on me. Sort of like having a waking dream.”

Reece wants to achieve what he calls an “awe effect” with the mural and hopes his artwork will bring hospital visitors positive emotions when com-ing to the hospital to heal.

“I wanted to make you laugh a little,” he said. “To make you feel fondness for the animals who are all having a

good time.”Parks completed painting the canvas

at the Lincoln School’s art gallery after a month. On Oct. 3, he wrapped up the painting for LHC to transport it to the hospital’s new location, where it was installed before the open house cele-bration held Oct. 10.


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Peg SundlingRealtor

Danice HeidtAssistant

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Stephanie BrittainRealtor

Documents

Livingston Health Care Commemorative Edition 2015