Client News
WASHINGTON, Indiana – As part of its continuing efforts to help local businesses recover from the COVID-19 pandemic, the Daviess County Economic Development Corporation (DCEDC) has partnered with Purdue Extension to develop and engage local businesses countywide in a formal business retention and expansion program (Daviess County BR&E).
“The pandemic brought many changes to businesses and workforce over the past year and half, and many people worked tirelessly in Daviess County to help local businesses to both keep their doors open and now to start the recovery process,” said Bryant Niehoff, DCEDC executive director. “We know from data from economic development experts and the Purdue Center for Regional Development that businesses – particularly businesses in rural areas – typically benefit greatly when those businesses are engaged together.”
“As a result, the Daviess County Economic Development Corporation is now working with Purdue Extension to bring our broad base of businesses and local community organizations together in a formal Business Retention and Expansion Program,” he explained.
“Through capacity building, robust data analysis and participatory techniques, Purdue Extension works with economic development officials to move counties forward by promoting business development,” said Heather Strohm, Regional Extension Educator, Community Development at Purdue University. “Purdue’s Business Retention & Expansion program seeks to foster collaboration among stakeholders to positively impact economies while deepening conversations about bettering communities.”
KANSAS CITY, Missouri – With more than 130 hospitals closing over the past decade, rural health care faces complex and urgent situations in the United States. To address these critical issues, the National Rural Health Association has launched a three-year rural Leadership Challenge to raise $1 million for scholarships and support.
“Rural health care delivery – both inside and outside of rural hospitals and clinics – continues to confront a variety of issues that are unique to rural areas,” said Alan Morgan, Chief Executive Officer of the National Rural Health Association (NRHA). “Fortunately, NRHA already has programs in place to help effectively address these issues and strengthen rural hospitals and health care delivery across the nation.”
NRHA leverages two proven programs that NRHA has been developing and implementing for almost a decade – the intensive NRHA Fellows program, and C-level (CEO, CFO, CNO) executive leadership training administered by the Center for Rural Leadership (CRHL) to support and train current and future health care leaders.
“Since rural hospitals and health care professionals provide an economic and societal anchor for rural communities, this is a critical time for rural health care in America –the key differentiator that brings success centers on the quality and depth of executive leadership,” Morgan continued. “We are looking to corporations, organizations and individuals to contribute to the Rural Health and Leadership Education Foundation to help us provide critical funding and scholarships so more professionals can take part in this training.”
Brittany Stout, a Family Nurse Practitioner with SICHC, was selected as the Grand Marshal for the popular 53rd Orange County Pumpkin Festival Parade in honor of her work in addictions and recovery, including the founding of the Safe Haven Recovery Center in West Baden. Following is a press release about the parade and Ms. Stout’s exemplary service.
FRENCH LICK/WEST BADEN, Indiana – Excitement is building for the return of the popular Orange County Pumpkin Festival Parade on Sunday, October 3, with more than 25 confirmed floats and entries. The long-time event, organized this year by the Love Never Fails -United Christian Church organizations, will begin in West Baden and end near the French Lick Resort, lasting from 2-4 p.m.
More than 3,000 people from the region are expected to attend the two-hour parade.
“The 2021 Pumpkin Festival Parade is shaping up to be a great event,” said Pastor Jason Lindsey of Love Never Fails – United Christian Church in West Baden. “We are privileged and happy to work with the community to help bring this important event back to what looks like an exciting and successful return.”
Brittany Stout, a founder of the Safe Haven Recovery Center in West Baden and a Family Nurse Practitioner with the Southern Indiana Community Health Care (SICHC) group, was named to serve as the Grand Marshal for this year’s parade.
“Brittany is an outstanding person in the community and has played an important role in helping the region step up and provide needed recovery and other services through Safe Haven in West Baden, as well as working to reduce the harmful stigma around seeking help in recovery” said Pastor Lindsey. “We at Love Never Fails and the United Christian Church are pleased to be able to partner and work with Safe Haven to provide much needed services to the greater community.”
He noted that the event plans to recognize people coming up in the region who have shown “exceptional commitment to service – people like Brittany represent the future of our community.”
“We at SICHC are grateful and proud to see our providers like Brittany be recognized for their service,” said Nancy Radcliff, SICHC CEO. “The goals and focus of the Safe Haven and Love Never Fails groups align well with what SICHC is focused on achieving in the community, and we look forward to continuing to be supportive.”
UMTRC, a federally funded program of the Indiana Rural Health Association (IRHA), serves four states in helping to establish, grow and sustain critical telehealth operations.
TERRE HAUTE, Indiana – Telehealth continues to grow exponentially across the United States, and telehealth operations in the Midwest will now continue to benefit from the Upper Midwest Telehealth Resource Center (UMTRC). The organization, a pioneer and long-time champion of Midwest telehealth expansion, was awarded $975,000 as part of a major three-year federal grant ($325,000 a year) from the Health Resources and Services Administration (HRSA).
IRHA CEO
“The need for and expansion of telehealth literally exploded during the 2020 lockdown and COVID-19 crisis,” said Cara Veale, CEO of the Indiana Rural Health Association. “The UMTRC has played an important role in helping hospitals, clinics, physicians and medical professionals institute and bring high-impact telehealth operations up to speed.”
The UMTRC is one of 12 Regional and 2 National Telehealth Resource Centers, one for policy and one for technology, that are funded by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services’ (DHHS) and HRSA’s Office for the Advancement of Telehealth, which is part of the Office of Rural Health Policy.
“The pandemic year was a transformational time for telehealth services, as telehealth went from an emerging alternative to a dominant solution for the delivery of certain types of healthcare, including urgent situations,” said Becky Sanders, UMTRC Program Director, “Telehealth as a market accelerated from a few million dollars annually a decade ago to an incredible $10 billion in 2020.”
The industry, she said, is expected to more than triple in size over the next few years to approach $40 billion in service value.
Telehealth is recognized as critically important at the federal level. Health and Human Services Secretary Xavier Becerra outlined the importance of telehealth when he announced the new three-year grants: “Telehealth is crucial to providing convenient and sustained care for patients.”
Added HRSA acting Administrator Diana Espinosa, “Telehealth expands access to care and is a vital tool for improving health equity by providing timely clinical assessment and treatment for our most vulnerable populations.” She went on to say that the new funding “will help drive the innovation necessary to build clinical networks, educational opportunities, and trusted resources to further advance telehealth.”
After turning on the network for its first residential customers in 2016, Smithville also built a 100-gigabit core network node for commercial growth in the Jasper area.
JASPER, Indiana – Smithville, a national top 100 broadband company, turned on its final fiberhood in the city of Jasper in August, bringing fiber construction to a close for its $15 million fiber overbuild project, according to Darby McCarty, Chairman and CEO. The citywide project brings symmetrical gigabit connectivity (up to 1,000 Mbps download and upload speed) to businesses and residents and the network – which includes a 100-gigabit core network node – “will benefit the people of Jasper for many years to come,” McCarty said.
“We promised in our formal announcement of the project in 2015 that we would deliver a transformational network with gigabit speed, and we have achieved that,” she added. Smithville divided the construction segments in Jasper into 27 separate “fiberhoods.” The first residential customers on the new Smithville network were turned on in 2016.
“Smithville has proven to be a great partner for the people and businesses of Jasper,” said Mayor Dean Vonderheide of Jasper. “Their state-of-the-art fiber network and commitment to the community has created many new opportunities for the city.” The Mayor added that he is aware of a number of new Jasper residents who specifically relocated to the city because of the availability of high-speed fiber connectivity.
Unlike many other fiber civic overbuild projects in Indiana, Smithville did not receive any taxpayer funds or TIF district funding for the Jasper project, which began construction in 2015.
An unusual news post – In 2021, MEK was privileged to nominate Yolanda Yoder, M.D., Chief Medical Officer for the four-county Southern Indiana Community Health Care organization (SICHC), for the Indiana Rural Health Association’s (IRHA) top award for individual excellence in rural healthcare. While we at MEK are privileged to represent SICHC, the nomination and completion of the extensive application was done pro bono (with the timely help of Katarina Koch at SICHC). The letters of support for Dr. Yoder’s nomination (IU Health, etc.) were generous in worthy praise for Dr. Yoder’s amazing work. The good news? Dr. Yoder won the award! To our astonishment, we were able to keep it a secret from her (no small task). When she was invited to come up and received the award, she was her typical humble, self-effacing self. Caught a little off-guard, she merely accepted the award, not making any remarks (here’s the remarkable video). True to form, she later wished she had thanked and recognized all those who, in her words, made the award possible. So, again true to form, she wrote it out. Here are her words of thanks:
Dear MEK team,
I must say that I was a tad overwhelmed by the event at the Indiana Rural Health award event and in reflecting back over the fun, the embarrassment at the attention and the grief that I didn’t bravely take the podium to say what was on my heart, I wanted you to know that I am deeply grateful that your team has taken us under your wing to help highlight what rural communities can do. If we can be an example for others, we are invigorated anew in the work that we do. You have gone above and beyond as our partner in this work.
To put all of this together, I’ve penned some thoughts that I needed to put together……
Upon receiving the Doc Hollywood award, if I had taken the podium, this is what I would have said.
“This is a humbling achievement, and I can’t stand on this stage and receive it without the awkward feeling that it is misplaced. The entire broad host of collaborators for our region is really the team that needs to be named. It is this team that has championed with formidable determination and creativity it’s love for rural communities and many of you are in this room today:
Smithville selected for Top 100 recognition in part for deploying networks intended to transform local economies or improve communities’ quality of life and for introducing innovative technologies with game-changing potential.
ELLETTSVILLE, Indiana – Recognized with other industry leaders found to be “exceptional in their achievements and ambition,” Smithville was honored in July as one of America’s top 100 national broadband companies, according to Sean Buckley, editor-in-chief of Broadband Communities magazine.
Requirements to be selected in the intense annual competition include deploying networks intended to transform local economies or improve communities’ quality of life; introducing innovative technologies with game-changing potential; and provide key conditions for fiber builds, including advocacy.
TERRE HAUTE, Indiana – Getting the urgent word out – expanding its statewide campaign to encourage rural Hoosiers to get vaccinated for COVID-19, the Indiana Rural Health Association (IRHA) produced and is promoting a series of short videos from trusted rural physicians and hospital leaders and administrators. This includes stories of physicians and healthcare professionals who had COVID-19 or experienced the devastation personally.
IRHA CEO
“Given the current rise in the highly contagious Delta variant of COVID-19, getting the facts about the available COVID-19 vaccines is more important than ever,” said Cara Veale, IRHA CEO.
“A whole range of healthcare professionals, including hospital CEOs, leading physicians and a surgeon, stepped up to help encourage people in rural areas to get vaccinated for COVID-19,” Veale explained. “All have personally seen firsthand the ravages of COVID and the suffering that COVID-19 patients can go through.”
All of the healthcare professionals participating in the videos have been vaccinated themselves.
The videos are being distributed and promoted through various means, including targeted social media across Indiana rural areas.
“We were asked directly by Dr. Kris Box, the Indiana State Health Commissioner, to try and help reach rural people, and we’re taking this very seriously,” Veale added. “Research shows that rural people want to get verified information from trusted sources, so we focused on finding professionals who are well known in their communities.”