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Celebrating 50 Years � Care

KVKittitas Valley Healthcare

Hospitals in small, rural areas like Kittitas County exist to serve their communities. The very best of these hospitals and healthcare organizations take their cues from the communities that they serve.I believe that Kittitas Valley Healthcare has successfully used the input of the community and the guidance of its publicly elected Board of Commissioners as it has transformed from the single hospital that opened its doors to the community on December 29, 1964, to the system of healthcare services that it offers today.As we celebrate a milestone of caring with the fiftieth anniversary of our community hospital, we see a very different healthcare delivery system than what existed in 1964. We see a hospital which has been named in the top 20 of a peer group containing over 1300 critical access hospitals. We see clinics that offer services to patients of all ages, from family medicine to orthopedic specialty surgeries. And we see additional highly-valued services like home health and hospice care.Changes to the healthcare delivery system will continue in the next 50 years. By continuing to take its cues from the community, Kittitas Valley Healthcare will be well poised to meet the needs of the future.

The first patients were accepted at KVH Hospital on December 29, 1964. Now, 50 years later, Kittitas Valley Healthcare celebrates a milestone of caring for the community in a compilation of stories, photos, facts, and historic news articles.The items on the following pages were released through social media postings (Facebook, Twitter, Linked In) and on the KVH website. One item was released per day, beginning on the 50th anniversary of the hospital opening.In researching the organization’s history, several people were identified as having a distinct story or perspective. Their stories are reproduced here in their entirety.

Celebrating the past, planning for the future

50 Years in 50 Days - Rediscovering a history � care

Page 3: Maxine WebsterPage 5: Melva SchmidtPage 7: Deb and Micah BrunnerPage 9: Jim PowellPage 11: Don and Bev KearnsPage 13: Joan GloverPage 15: Debi BarneycastlePage 17: Chic Powers and Dee Linder

Paul Nurick, CEO

Day 1: On December 29, 1964, the first patients are received at KVH Hospital.

Day 2: In 1960, voters supported forming a public hospital district, now known as KVH.

4023 “Yes”1590 “No”

Day 3: Meet Maxine Webster, mother of the 4th baby born in KVH Hospital.

Day 4: Suites built during a 1997 remodel combine a relaxed birthing environment and the security of a hospital setting.

Day 5: Original blueprints for KVH Hospital, which included the first private patient rooms.

Page 3

50 years after KVH Hospital first opened to the public, we celebrate a milestone of caring for the community with this collection of posts and stories reflecting our history.

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Access your medical records online. Get what you need, when you need it - wherever you are.

Follow My Health

Have you joined the patient portal?

www.kvhealthcare.org/portal

at KVH Hospital

Day 6: Published in the Daily Record, a hospital listing from 1965 gives patient details now protected by HIPAA.

Day 7: In 2008, KVH began the transition from paper records to electronic medical records.

Day 8: KVH Hospital inpatients, observation patients, and surgical outpatients can now access information about their visit via the patient portal.

Day 9: (Staff submission) What happens when your patient arrives...with a service pony?

Day 10: Melva Schmidt was there to help the first patients when KVH Hospital opened, and for many years to come.

"The horse assisted the patient, who had very limited vision. We somehow managed to get the horse and the patient back to the treatment room. "I soon discovered the horse was very protective of its owner. It attempted to bite me several times during the procedure. We managed to do what we do here at KVH and took exceptional care of our patient.”

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The year was 1943. Maxine Webster, then 15 and newly-arrived in Ellensburg with her widowed mother, was petite, pretty and possessed of a ready smile and quickly found herself at home in her new community.

In her sophomore year of high school, a boy named Sam Webster caught her eye. Good-looking and good-natured, he was the same age as Maxine but two grades ahead of her because her start in school had been delayed by tuberculosis.

One day Maxine, a jitterbug fan who loved to dance, invited Sam to a tolo and before long, they were a couple, dancing at the local YWCA or at Playland, a large dance pavilion in Selah that drew packed crowds. Sam enrolled at Central after graduation only to be drafted into the Army. Three days later, the war ended. Sam was shipped off to post-war Japan to run a PX. Maxine wrote regularly “to keep his morale up.”

With Sam back home after an 18-month enlistment, the romance that had budded at tolo resumed. Sam enrolled at Central and worked in his family's business. In December 1948 he presented Maxine with a ring. “I get to choose the month,” he told her, designating August. “You choose the day.” Laughing, Maxine immediately suggested the first. Her mother was thrilled. It had been her own wedding day. “When I checked the calendar, it was a Monday,” Maxine says. “But I couldn't disappoint her.” They wed on August 1, 1949 at St. Andrews Catholic Church, exchanging vows that would endure 58 years until Sam's death in 2008.

Sam's family owned several businesses, among them the popular Webster's Café and Smokehouse, originally a candy store founded by Sam's grandfather in 1907. The Smokehouse area of the business was a place where a mostly male clientele gathered for coffee, conversation, cigars and a quick meal while sharing news of the day.

Maxine Webster: KVH Patient

Maxine and Sam with their children. Kent, �ont right, was born at KVH Hospital just days a�er it opened.

Day 3

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When his father retired, Sam took over the Café and Smokehouse which closed in 1986 after nearly eight decades of operation.

While Sam ran the business, Maxine turned to running a family. It would be no small task. The couple had seven children, the first three born at the old Ellensburg General Hospital, the next two at Valley General Hospital and the sixth at Ellensburg General. In 1964, Maxine was pregnant again. Just before midnight on December 31, their youngest child - a boy they named Kent - became the fourth baby born at KVH Hospital. Opened just two days earlier, the brand new hospital was a study in modernity and “much better” than its predecessors, Maxine says.

With a dozen beds, no fewer than 11 staff members, labor rooms separated from other patients and a separate waiting room for fathers, the obstetrical wing marked a new era of obstetrical care in Ellensburg. Patient rooms, described as light, airy and comfortable, were equipped with a two-way communication system between patients and nurses, phones and TVs, and pipe oxygen and suction at the electrically operated patient beds. Each of the three nurseries were equipped with four bassinets plus a state-of-the-art incubator. The hospital also offered disposable, pre-packaged formula.

“I was only there 45 hours but if I remember right, there was wallpaper on some of the walls and it felt homey,” Maxine, now 86, says. “It seemed like the personnel was better and the equipment was better. It was a well-run hospital. There were some in the community who liked the old hospital better,” Maxine says. “But I liked the new one. It was time.”

Maxine Webster: KVH Patient, continued

Day 11: The KVH Patient and Family Centered Care initiative involves patients and their families in care and decision making, looking at issues through the eyes of the patient and family. (Photo: PFCC committee members)

Day 12: "Click. Compare. Covered." Washington Healthplanfinder, the health insurance exchange for our state, opens to the public on October 1, 2013, in accordance with the Affordable Care Act.

Day 13: It helps to have partners in patient care. Trained STEMI teams at KVH Hospital prepare heart attack patients like Nancy for quick transport to the catheterization lab at Yakima Regional Medical and Cardiac Center. (Photo: KVH patient Nancy Jurenka)

Day 14: KVH partners with local organizations, resolving issues together as a Community of Health.

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For Melva Schmidt, the morning of May 18, 1980 began as an ordinary Sunday. She was at home building a fence with her sons. What happened next would go down in history. Two hundred miles away, Mt. St. Helens erupted, sending a plume of smoke and ash skyward, blanketing Kittitas County in ash. “It looks like Nebraska is coming,” Schmidt, then director of nursing at KVH Hospital, told her sons as the sky darkened. She called the charge nurse to check in. Driving to the hospital, “it was daytime but it was dark,” she says. “Ash was falling. You couldn't see ahead of you. You couldn't see the side of the road.”

Uncertain whether the water supply would be interrupted, nurses filled bathtubs with water. KVH Hospital, its windows closed and ventilation limited, became a refuge in an unfamiliar storm. “If staff could get in, they were there,” Schmidt says. “That was true of all departments.” With roads blocked, stranded travelers with prescription needs turned to the hospital pharmacy for help, exhausting supplies. An unusually high number of women went into labor - probably prompted by stress and anxiety - swamping OB. “I believe we had six to eight babies born in 24 hours,” Schmidt says. One newly-delivered mother slept in the hallway until a bed opened up in a room.

The next day, sunlight streamed through the windows. Schmidt's relief was immense and immediate. By the time she left, she had logged nearly 24 hours on-site. She would recall it as the most unforgettable experience in her 32-year career at KVH Hospital.

Raised in rural Nebraska, Schmidt attended a one-room school through eighth grade, then a high school with an enrollment of 43. Her 12-member graduating class included Bill Schmidt, then a friend but not a sweetheart. That would come when he was in college and she in nursing school. Married in his senior year, the couple arrived in Ellensburg in 1963 when he landed a teaching job at Central.

Melva Schmidt: Nursing / Foundation

Day 10

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Melva Schmidt: Nursing / Foundation, continued

Day 15: In early 2013, KVCH became KVH to more accurately reflect the organization's growth into "more than a hospital.”

Two private hospitals - Ellensburg General and Valley General - served the community and Schmidt, a young mother with small children, worked part-time at the latter. Change was coming. A public hospital district had been formed and a new community hospital was being built. Guilds were formed to help support it. “So the community was investing in it even before it opened,” she says.

On December 29, 1964, with Valley General Hospital already closed, Schmidt was on hand as KVH Hospital admitted its first patients, transported from Ellensburg General via hearse because the community had no ambulance. “Everything was shiny and new,” recalls Schmidt, noting that in the beginning, the emergency room was unstaffed. “If the bell rang, a nurse would go down and we'd contact whoever the doctor on call was.”

In 1971, she was asked to become director of nursing. “I was ready so I ended up doing that - and a little bit more,” says Schmidt who implemented an orientation program for nurses new to the hospital and, twice when the hospital found itself without an administrator, helped run it. “She was who I wanted to be - strong and elegant,” says Deb Brunner, now director of patient financial services at KVH Hospital. In 1998, after 17 years as director of nursing, then another eight in charge of infection control, risk management and quality assurance, Schmidt retired. The next year, eager to support KVH Hospital, she joined the board of The Foundation at KVH.

Now 80, she's unapologetically proud of the hospital, the community that supports it and the people who are at its heart. “KVH Hospital is well-respected and has consistently been ahead of most rural hospitals,” she says. “I feel proud of the quality medical community we have and that the hospital remains up-to-date with new services and equipment. It's 50 years of hard work and cooperation - and it's still going on.”

Day 16: (Video) Staff explain the new KVH brand in their own words in "One KVH.”

Day 18: (Volunteer submission) As a child, Wyman Renfrow looked forward to Ellensburg's annual circus and carnival. Years later, he learned the new hospital would be built on the land where he'd made those childhood memories. Today, Wyman is a fixture at KVH Hospital, where he assists patients and visitors as one of its faithful volunteers.

Day 17: With a combined 45 years of service, this mother and son duo consider fellow KVH co-workers a part of their extended family.

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Relationships matter - at home and in the workplace. Just ask Deb Brunner. If employees at Kittitas Valley Healthcare feel like family to Brunner, there's good reason - and it's not just because her son Micah is one of them. Brunner, director of patient financial services and a familiar face at KVH for 40 years, has forged a host of friendships over that time.

Flash back to January 1975. The hospital, opened in December 1964, is a decade old. Deb, then 19, is hired by office manager Dee Linder to work the reception desk. Linder, a neighbor of the Brunner family, had a reputation for grooming good workers for bigger things. Deb would prove no exception.

The pay was $1.90 an hour. The business office had just gotten its first electric typewriter - and Deb was thrilled to be on board. "I loved it. The people were awesome. It just fit," she says. But there was an obstacle: a daunting, sharp-tongued nurse intent on making sure Deb knew her place. "The worst part of the job was the beginning," Deb says. "The emergency room nurse just kept ripping into me. I found out later she did it to everybody. But once you made it through that she was your best friend."

The first of her family to join KVH, Deb was not the last. Etta Sinclair, her mother, worked a decade in the hospital laundry. Terri Rasmussen, her sister, spent several years in purchasing. But it was Deb who forged a career at KVH, advancing into increasingly responsible positions. In 1995, she was named to her current post where she supervises a staff of 18 that includes patient financial services, reception desk and registration desk employees.

Six years ago another generation of her family became part of KVH when Micah hired on as an engineering technician with the maintenance department.

Micah & Deb Brunner: Multi-Generational Empl�ees

Day 17

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Micah and Deb Brunner: Multi-Generational Empl�ees, continuedMicah was on seasonal leave from his father's underground sprinkler company when Randy Kaiser, director of engineering at KVH and a family friend, invited him to fill in for an employee going on leave. Then a permanent position opened up and Micah got it.

It was a homecoming of sorts. Now 30, Micah was born at KVH Hospital. "For me, the big draw was working with Randy," he says. "Growing up, he was like a second dad to me. Ever since I was a kid he took me fishing and hunting." Micah relishes the daily diversity of his job, "I go from troubleshooting an electrical problem to maintaining medical equipment to changing light bulbs to pulling weeds. I never know what my day is going to consist of," he says.

For Deb, staying abreast of rapidly changing federal regulations poses constant challenges. "It's tough," she says. "That's why you never get bored on this job." Frequent turnover on the reception and registration desks, where many of the employees are college students who leave when their studies are over, also poses a challenge.

Deb says the rewards of her job outweigh the challenges because while she's not directly involved in patient care, she knows her efforts help patients. "It's rewarding to help people work through the financial process," she says.

And then there are the relationships developed over four decades at KVH Hospital. "I have a lot of friends here," says Deb. Micah shares his mother's sentiment. "Some of my best memories are of growing up with people who work here," he says. "It's cool to be working with people I know. You're an individual - not just an employee."

19931969

Day 19: (Community submission) Getting things ready for the hospital opening was a community effort. Thank you, Dan Wilson, Don Shea, and all the others who made it possible to open the hospital doors that extra-snowy December of 1964.

Day 20: Current KVH employees who were born at KVH Hospital.

Day 21: Nearly 25 years apart, aerial views of South Ellensburg show changes to the hospital campus.

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When a tree he was cutting down at his Salmon la Sac cabin in 2006 accidentally fell on him, Dr. Jim Powell suffered serious injuries. The tree punctured his left lung, broke "six or eight" ribs off the left side of his spine, fractured his left tibia and broke his ankle.

Transported to KVH Hospital, the then 78-year-old Powell spent a week in ICU, and another week in a regular ward. "Dr. Hiersche put me together bone-wise," the now 86-year-old Powell says gratefully. "Dr. Feng kept me alive. I got excellent care." It came as no surprise to Powell. After all, he'd come to Ellensburg in 1967, just three years after the hospital opened, spent 27 years practicing there and has been a front row witness to the hospital's role in serving a community he loves.

Born in Rolla, Missouri, Powell met his wife Joyce there in 1953. He was preparing for his first year in medical school. Joyce, an Oklahoma native, had just finished a master's degree at New Orleans Baptist Seminary and been named the first-ever youth and education director at his church. After seeing her photo in the local paper, Powell - never shy - walked into the church, sat down at the piano and began playing and singing. Thus introduced, he invited Joyce out to "meet" his car, an "ugly brown" 1936 Ford he called Betsy. "She thought I was a kook," he says, laughing. "She wrote a letter home and said, 'I met this guy - but he's nuts.' But she liked my parents."

It proved a favorable omen. They married the next year in Oklahoma. After finishing school, Powell went on to a one-year internship at a government hospital in Panama, then did a one-year general surgery internship in Wichita. Powell, a man of deep faith, was preparing for the mission field. That call overseas never came. Powell spent four years in practice in rural Kansas, then moved on to a four year general surgery residence at Seattle's Providence Hospital.

Jim Powell

Day 24

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: Physician

Jim Powell: Physician, continued

Day 25: "In recent years the public's attention has been focused on the tremendous technological advances hospitals have made in patient care. It is too often forgotten that human hands must operate the machines, and that technology is useless without technologists. [Our employees] have a common goal - better patient care - and a firm belief that a hospital is truly people caring for people." - Warne Schaap, KVH Hospital Administrator, in a Hospital Week article published in the Daily Record on May 11, 1968.

Day 24: After a serious accident, this former doctor becomes a patient in the hospital where he worked for nearly 30 years.

Page 9

Day 22: In January 2015, KVH hosts the Chamber of Commerce Business After Hours.

Day 23: (Video) KVH employees past and present recount the changes of a growing organization.

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While visiting possible practice sites around the Northwest, he and Joyce visited Ellensburg. KVH Family Medicine - Ellensburg wanted him at the end of his residency. Then, one of the clinic's doctors died unexpectedly. "When Dr. Brown died, they said, 'We need you now,'" Powell recalls. "So I came at the end of my third year."

It was an era with few specialists. Most doctors' practices were multi-faceted. Powell was no exception. "At the time I felt like with my training I could do a lot of things that I wouldn't do now," he says. "I did a little of everything - pinned hips, set broken bones, took out thyroids, stuck needles in chests and drained them, took cartilage out of knees. Most of my training was abdominal. I took out partial stomachs and parts of colons."

He also delivered babies - lots of babies. How many? "Maybe 800, maybe a thousand," he says. "One year I was averaging eight babies a month and on pace to do a hundred that year. I can remember being up all night delivering a baby and doing a gastric re-section the next day. So I started cutting back on the babies."

In the early 1990s, fascinated by the advent of laparoscopic surgery for gallbladders, Powell took training. He and another local surgeon, Dr. Ken Harris, proctored each other in order to qualify for privileges to perform the procedure at KVH. Doctors from around central Washington came to KVH to observe the new technique.

Today, two decades after Powell hung up his surgical scrubs for the last time, he says former patients still thank him for the care they received. His pride in his association with KVH Hospital endures. "I'm proud that the hospital continues to progress in acquiring people with advanced skills and in acquiring new instrumentation and technology," he says. "They're able to do what many hospitals do and when necessary they refer patients to places that can provide more advanced treatment. I'm very proud of this hospital."

Some habits are hard to break - and that can be a good thing. Case in point: Don and Bev Kearns, whose smiles are as infectious as their enthusiasm for KVH Hospital.

Don, a retired veterinarian, and Bev, retired from a job as receptionist at what is now KVH Family Medicine - Ellensburg, are among the 65 in-service volunteers who, in 2014, collectively donated 12,000 hours to the hospital. He's 84; she, 79. Introduced by a mutual friend who ignored Bev's insistence that she was not interested in romance and now married 28 years, they have a combined total of 56 years as KVH volunteers between them.

Bev's start came in 1975 when she joined a hospital guild. A critical part of community support for the hospital in earlier days, the guilds eventually disappeared but their impact lingers - sometimes visually - as in the case of the hospital rose garden, started by a guild. That same year Bev signed on for what would be a ten-year stint as an in-hospital volunteer, most of it spent in the hospital imaging department. It was a role she relished.

“I started in X-ray, then they started doing mammograms and I got to help with that, then I got to help with ultrasounds,” she says, recalling her role as hospital imaging technology became increasingly sophisticated. Though she understands the reasons for change, back in the days before strict privacy rules and other regulations became an industry standard, there was more interaction with patients and that was rewarding, she says.

In 1985, when the then-treasurer of the KVH Auxiliary Hazel Harrell retired, Bev took on the job. She's been at it ever since, overseeing the auxiliary's finances and the distribution of funds the auxiliary raises. It's no small task.

Bev and Don Kearns: Auxiliary / Volunteer

Day 31

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Bev and Don Kearns: Auxiliary / Volunteer, continued

Day 26: In 2006, the hospitalist program begins at KVH Hospital, starting with weekend coverage and growing into a 24/7 presence. Of the many benefits of hospitalists, the most obvious is also the most important: "They are always there."

Since 1992, the auxiliary has provided nearly $89,000 on purchases ranging from equipment for the OB unit and other departments to TVs in patient rooms and waiting rooms. “Each year we ask departments to submit a wish list for what they need and we decide what we're going to do from that,” Bev says. Beginning in 1997, the auxiliary also has awarded more than $28,000 in scholarships to two dozen recipients in medical-related studies. Most of the money raised comes through the popular auxiliary-run gift shop and coffee stand in the hospital lobby. “There was always a small gift shop,” Bev says. “In May 2002, we took it over and have had it since then.”

The auxiliary also raises money by selling engraved paving stones for the path that surrounds the guild-started rose garden. Available for $60 each, “they can be purchased in memory of someone or to honor someone who's still living,” Bev says.

In 1997, while a Search and Rescue volunteer doing EMT training, Don signed on as a volunteer in the emergency room. It proved a perfect fit. Seventeen years later he's still volunteering there one day a week. “I stock rooms. I run lab samples (to the lab). Basically, it's being a helper for anything they need,” he says. “You won't see me sitting.” His duties don't include greeting patients - that's left to regular staff. But that doesn't preclude offering a comforting smile when appropriate. “The reward is helping people,” says Don, who likes being part of KVH Hospital's trademark teamwork. “You do what you can to help and you feel good when someone came in who was really ill and you know they made it through.”

Now living in Selah, Bev says she and Don still have a heart for KVH and the community it serves. How long will they be involved? They exchange smiles. “Until we can't do it any more,” she says, glancing at Don. “Or maybe until the fish are biting,” he says - and grins.

Day 27: KVH began a new quality improvement journey using principles of ‘Lean’ in 2011. Requests from other organizations to see Lean in action at KVH led to site visits, including two separate visits from Stanford Hospital and Clinics (pictured above).

Day 28: (Staff submission) "When Mt. St. Helens blew in May 1980, we had to walk to work or stay at the hospital. They turned off the air, so it was HOT! The nursing moms had problems, so we packed them in ice to increase milk production. It was a week of overtime and hardship."

Day 29: Three months after the Mt. St. Helens eruption, the county updates its disaster plan. The team of four officials drafting the update includes KVH Hospital’s nursing director Melva Schmidt.

Hospitalist room

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As she stood in the Kittitas County Courthouse on the evening of September 15, 1998, Joan Baird Glover beamed jubilantly. There was good reason. Voters had just approved an $11.5 million bond levy for KVH Hospital. The measure passed with a 68 percent "yes" vote and would fund a much needed 32,000 square foot expansion and major renovations at the hospital.

"We were elated," says Glover, then in her first go-round as president of the Kittitas County Public Hospital District No. 1/Kittitas Valley Healthcare Board of Commissioners. "It was absolutely gratifying to all of us." Accomplished in two stages, the project included enlarged operating rooms, an expanded Emergency Department, improvements to the lab area, a dedicated outpatient surgery area, a helicopter landing pad, a new main entrance and a host of other changes.

Glover, who has a deep appreciation of the importance of protecting public trust, believes the hospital’s clear communication and accountability were key to passage. "The Board and administration showed we were

Day 38Joan Baird Glover: KVH Board � Comm�ioners

effective and responsible in overseeing a vital resource for all members of our community," she says. "We answered questions clearly and honestly. We had a clear and specific plan for how the bond levy revenue would be used."

Seventeen years later, KVH Hospital is testimony to that trust - and Glover, who recently resigned after 19 years on the board, including six years as president, was instrumental in keeping it so. Glover is highly respected both locally and at the state level for her commitment to quality healthcare. She's been on the Washington State Hospital Association's Board of Trustees since 2010, served on a variety of the organization's committees and been honored for her contributions multiple times.

At first glance, she seemed an unlikely presence in Ellensburg. Blame love - and apples.

Raised in Texas and the daughter of a physician, Glover dreamed of becoming a doctor until organic chemistry got in her way in college. "Science was never my strong suit," Glover says, flashing a smile. Glover went on to earn a degree in English, spent two years in the Peace Corps teaching English as a Second Language in Thailand, then earned a master’s in education at Tufts University. She spent four years teaching in Houston, then moved on to a career path that eventually melded her interest in writing and communication with her passion for healthcare.

A stint as assistant director of public affairs at Houston's Memorial Hermann Hospital, the University of Texas Medical School's teaching hospital, was followed by a move to M.D. Anderson Cancer Center, considered one of the top cancer centers in the country. Glover was named Director of Public Information there in 1985. "I had the most perfect job in the entire world," she says. Then, in 1986, friends introduced her to Fritz Glover, a chemical engineer with an MBA who spent most of his career in management of chemical company operations. 13

Joan Baird Glover: KVH Board � Comm�ioners

Joan Baird Glover: KVH Board � Comm�ioners, continued

Before long, they were planning a life together. He wanted a career change, a chance to try something new - something, it turns out, like growing apples. It would mean relocation. There were three criteria: a university town where she might find work, a set work shift for Fritz, and a scenic setting. On an exploratory trip to Washington state, Fritz drove through Ellensburg and the town filled the bill.

In 1988, he took early retirement; she gave notice. They bought a 25-acre pear and apple orchard (later expanded to 35 acres) in Ellensburg, married in June and arrived in Ellensburg in August. Two weeks later they were picking pears and Glover had landed a job at Central. "Two crazy people from Texas," Glover says now, laughing and shaking her head. But Glover's interest in healthcare wasn't over.

In fall 1995, she filed to run for the KVH Board of Commissioners. She ran unopposed. The Board shared a common goal: while KVH, a small, rural hospital, couldn't do everything larger counterparts could do, what it did do it needed to do well. Excellence would be the standard. "We all wanted KVH to be absolutely the best it could be at what it does and provide appropriate services to the community while not trying to do things better done at other places," says Glover.

She says people often voice surprise at the quality of care they find at KVH Hospital, recognized as one of the Top 20 critical access hospitals in the nation. It wasn't always the case. At the beginning of her involvement, she notes, "I'd sometimes hear people be negative - either about their own experience or some relative’s. I don't hear those stories anymore."

And while she recognizes the reputation KVH has for friendliness, it's not the yardstick she uses to measure the hospital's success. "To me, it's lovely that people are kind and pay attention to you," she says. "But if they can't back that up with excellent, high quality and evidence-based care, it means very little."

Last month, the Glovers sold their orchard and moved back to Houston. Leaving was bittersweet. "Ellensburg has been our home for 26 years and it will continue to be an incredibly large part of who I am."

Day 31: With 28 years of marriage and counting, Don and Bev Kearns also have a combined 56 years of volunteer service at KVH.

Page 11Day 30: Like hospitals across the nation, KVH prepared for the unlikely event of an Ebola patient in late 2014.

Day 32: Like our community, KVH continues to grow. Sometimes that growth requires a remodel, to meet needs for more space and to improve patient services. (Photos from 2001)

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Not long after she landed a job in housekeeping at KVH Hospital in January 1974, Debi Barneycastle, then 19, considered quitting. She didn't. Forty years later, she's glad she stayed the course – and proud of the contributions she's made because she did. What the 59-year-old Barneycastle knows now that she didn't know then were the doors that would open to opportunity, the growth she would experience because of it and the relationships she would build along the way. “To build from within – we were good at that,” says Barneycastle, who speaks from experience. After eight months in housekeeping, Barneycastle advanced to a job working at the registration desk. A couple of years later, she became a billing clerk, doing bills by hand.

At 23, she left to have her first child and be a stay-at-home mom. The plan proved short-lived. She was back in six months. When the hospital began keying in data for its billing system, she trained to do it. By 1985, she was director of data processing, by 1991, director of information services. By then, she'd also done a stint as interim business manager after former business manager Chic Powers, a woman Barneycastle says was a powerful influence in her life, retired.

When KVH Hospital and four other rural hospitals joined in an effort to choose a computer system that would work for all of them, Barneycastle, then director of information services, was named to the team. “I was the only computer person on that five-hospital team,” she says. “The rest had other roles.” It was a confidence builder, powerful testimony to the faith KVH leaders had in her. “What made me successful was that I wasn't afraid to get in and get my hands dirty,” says Barneycastle, who currently serves as the hospital's director of compliance and revenue cycle. Directing revenue cycle “is an umbrella for anything to do with money,” she says. Duties range from negotiating the hospital's contracts with insurance companies, to overseeing the hospital's licensure, to monitoring patient charges for accuracy.

Debi Barn�castle

Day 42

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: Long-Term Empl�ee

Debi Barn�castle: Long-Term Empl�ee, continued

Day 34: KVH employees with 25 or more years of service.

Day 33: John Burkheimer helped lead the formation of Kittitas County Public Hospital District No. 1. He served on the KVH Board of Commissioners for 12 years, until his death in 1976. Installed in 1978, the Burkheimer Glass Memorial is the work of Yakima artist Carolyn Bowman.

Day 35: 2014 was an historic year for more than just KVH. We take our 12th Man role very seriously. (2015 photo)

As director of compliance, she makes sure KVH Hospital is up-to-date on and following rules and regulations set up by the federal Office of the Inspector General regarding how both employees and patients are treated.

Much has changed since the early days, she says, and it's not just the advent of constantly evolving technology and new regulations governing hospital operations. Services have grown. So has the number of people providing them. “When I first started here there were 100 employees,” she says. Now, there are over 550.

“I've worked for every administrator of this organization,” she says. “There's only a couple of people who can say that.” Among them: Deb Brunner, director of patient financial services, who came on board at the same time Barneycastle did and is a personal friend. Relationships like that are part of the treasures of the job, says Barney-castle, who acknowledges that forging those close personal bonds may become more challenging in the future as KVH grows to meet community needs. “I've celebrated all the important moments of my life here,” she says. “It's all been good.” Well, with one major exception. “I did write a letter of resignation one time because the controller at the time and I did not see eye-to-eye,” she says. “The administration told me to take two weeks off. When I came back, that person was not here.”

With retirement no longer just a distant speck on the horizon, Barneycastle reflects happily on her four decades at KVH Hospital. “I've left a footprint on this organization, I think,” she says. “I've been privileged to have great jobs and great bosses. I think this is the greatest organization in the world.”

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The year was 1965. Chic Powers, then a nurse assistant at the new KVH Hospital, was struggling emotionally. Her mother was in the hospital - and dying. Powers was understandably distressed. One day the head nurse called Powers to work a shift. Powers refused. "You're here all the time anyway. You might as well work," the head nurse insisted. "I told her to go fly a kite, that my mother was dying," the now 85-year-old Powers says. The head nurse never called back. For several months, Powers sat at home. Her career at KVH Hospital might have ended then - if not for Dee Linder.

Now 84, Linder met Powers in 1960 when both were working at Ellensburg General Hospital, Linder as the office manager, Powers as a nurse assistant. Though their backgrounds were different, the two women clicked. Both had down-to-earth sensibilities and an appreciation for a solid work ethic.

Raised in Wisconsin, Linder was a teenager keeping a vigil at her dying father's bedside when she started working in the hospital's supply room and went on to doing payroll. Later, she worked in the office of a hospital in St. Louis. In 1960, her husband's job brought them to Ellensburg.

Powers, who has lived most of her life in Kittitas County, started in housekeeping at the old county hospital, then was trained there to be a nurse assistant. When the hospital closed, she moved on to a brief stint at a nursing home before landing at Ellensburg General.

On December 29, 1964, the newly-built KVH Hospital opened. By then, Linder was administrator at Ellensburg General, her predecessor having left abruptly after he was passed over for the same position at the new hospital.

Chic Powers and Dee Linder: Retired Empl�ees

Day 45

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Chic Powers and Dee Linder: Retired Empl�ees, continued

Day 37: Thanks to generous support from individuals, foundations and local businesses, the KVH Community Health Library opens to serve the public in 1998.

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The town's other private hospital - Valley General - was already closed. Powers, at KVH Hospital on opening day, remembers the excitement as patients from Ellensburg General were transferred. "It snowed all day," Powers recalls. "You wouldn't believe the snow." Both women agree, there was no question the community needed a new hospital. The old ones were in disrepair. "The conditions were not good in the other buildings. Just little things - like a bed going through the floor," Linder says in pointed understatement. "And tiles falling off the ceiling," Powers adds.

Several months after Powers' run-in with the head nurse, Linder, office manager at the new hospital, went to see her. Work for me, she said. Back at KVH, "I walked in and said I'd hired someone. I told them who," Linder says. "The administrator was not happy. I said, 'I'm sorry. She's hired.'" If the move was unpopular at the top, it was a godsend for Linder. "She was a lifesaver to me," says Linder who immediately put Powers to work on the switchboard, admitting people, and handling all calls. True to Linder's expectations, Powers excelled.

When Linder retired in 1979, "the commissioners asked me to step into her shoes. They were just 'You're going to do it' - so I did," says Powers, who went on to spend "a good ten years" as office manager. She took a break when her late husband got sick, then returned as part-time personnel director, filling a role she'd previously urged commissioners to create. In 1990, she retired after 33 years at KVH.

More than half a century since they first met and now both widowed, the two women remain close friends, proud of their work together at KVH Hospital. "People of our generation, when we worked your title wasn’t important," Linder says. "You proved yourself and you advanced. It was a good place to work. I was very proud to be part of it. We basically worked like a family. You had your squabbles from time to time - but we all got along."

Day 38: After two decades of accomplishments on the KVH Board of Commissioners, it's clear that for Joan Baird Glover "Healthcare is where my heart is."

Day 39: Joan Baird Glover, Rhonda Holden, and Paul Nurick are recognized for excellence in 2013-2014.

Day 40: (Staff submission) Long before Clinical Informatics Manager Jeanette DeFoe was born, her great aunt Edna Music was taking care of patients at KVH Hospital.

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Day 42: Follow Debi Barneycastle's four-decade journey at KVH from housekeeper to the head of compliance and revenue cycle management.

Day 44: KVH Hospital decreases its energy footprint in 2005 by upgrading its central heating plant from steam heat, paying for much of the upgrade through cost savings.

Day 43: Accolades from the Washington State Hospital Association:

“For 50 years, Kittitas Valley Healthcare has delivered exceptional health care services to its community. We’ve been proud to count KVH among our membership since 1964. Not only do KVH leaders bring the best to their community, they’re among the first leaders we look to at the state level to guide us on issues of health care delivery in rural areas and quality improvement for patients in all hospitals across our state. KVH represents the best in rural health care, where neighbors care for each other and a pioneering spirit leads to innovation.

“Congratulations to the KVH team and the Ellensburg community on this impressive milestone! We look forward to the next fifty years.”

– Scott Bond, WSHA President and Chief Executive Officer

Day 41: Just over a decade after KVH Hospital opened, it had serious growing pains. This photo is from a 1976 Daily Record article, “Closet Serves Pharmacy.”

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Page 17Day 45: Now friends for more than 50 years, two former KVH employees who were there from the beginning tell it like it was.

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Day 46: When the first list of Top 100 U.S. Critical Access Hospitals is released by the National Rural Health Association, KVH Hospital makes the list. When a Top 20 list is released the following year, KVH makes that one, and retains the ranking today.

Day 47: Resealed in 2015, the KVH time capsule was filled with items both new and old from departments across KVH. Those who open it 25 years from now will find everything from optic lenses and computer equipment to disposable diapers and single coffee packs.

Day 48: The Healing Garden at KVH Hospital began in 2004 with “a little bit of money and a lot of ambition.” On the south side of the hospital, it can be viewed from the hospital's family room and chapel. It is intended to provide a spot for quiet reflection.

Day 50: KVH employees provide predictions for how healthcare will be delivered in the future. By 2025, employees say:

509 674 6944

A Top 20 Hospital

KVKittitas Valley Healthcare

KVH Hospital

There are over 1300 critical access hospitals nationwide

Day 49: A 1992 Daily Record article highlights proposed, then-future changes to the KVH campus which addressed space issues as well as concerns raised by the community. Several of these changes which were expected by 2010 have been implemented and can be seen today:

helicopter pad on the second story roof

emergency room entrance for ambulances on the north end of the hospital

provider offices on the south end of campus (photo)

second floor for non-patient care services

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The model for preventive health will be convenient care – when patients need it most.

It will be common for patients to have home devices that monitor and report ‘real time’ data directly to the healthcare provider.

We will have virtual visits to the home instead of patients coming in to clinics.

Twenty-percent or more of the care we offer will be assisted by robots.

Surgeries will be replaced with noninvasive techniques.Preventive health planning will be based on DNA/genetic testing.

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KVH Family Medicine - Ellensburg

2009 2011

KVH Women’s HealthKVH General Surgery

2007KVH Orthopedics

1964KVH Hospital

KVH Internal Medicine KVH Family Medicine - Cle Elum

2005

KVH Urgent Care - Cle Elum

1993KVH Home Health

KVH Home Respiratory

KVH Hospice

1983KVH Physical Therapy

2004

More than a hospital

how we’ve grown

Clinics

Family Medicine - Cle Elum509-674-5331Family Medicine - Ellensburg509-933-8777

General Surgery509-962-7390

Internal Medicine509-925-6100

Orthopedics509-933-8700

Urgent Care - Cle Elum

Women’s Health

509-674-6944

509-933-8720

Specialty Services

Home Health509-962-7438

Home Respiratory509-962-7438

Hospice509-962-7438

Occupational Therapy509-933-8677

Speech Therapy509-933-8677

Physical Therapy509-962-7386

Hospital24-Hour Emergency Care | Critical Care | Family Birthing Center Imaging Services | Laboratory Services | Surgical Services509-962-9841

A Top 20 critical access hospital

13 clinics and specialty services