Meet Community Hospital

Many of you may still hold a thought that a hospital is a place where you go when you have an emergency or serious health issue and that you may or may not return home. Community Hospital of Staunton has evolved over the years even changing its name from Community Memorial Hospital. In 1951, it began as a hospital to service the dangerous local coal mining business. Along with the $14 million renovation that was completed in 2016, the hospital became affiliated with Anderson Healthcare. The affiliation has provided the Staunton patients and community members with more specialists they can see without having to travel out of the area for care.

The hospital is a rural acute care hospital with 118 employees which includes medical staff. The new CEO, Larry Spour, oversees the healthcare the hospital provides, which also includes interacting with Medicare, Medicaid, the IRS, federal agencies and numerous healthcare insurers.

Meet Larry Spour, CEO of Community Hospital of Staunton

The hospital has had to add more staffing to meet the ever changing requirements added to them and their patients by insurers just to receive some basic care. A care navigator has also been added to the hospital staffing to help patients work with their provider. If the patient is diabetic or has health problems requiring ongoing care, the navigator helps the patient get to their primary care physician or specialist.

As a Critical Access hospital, the Community Hospital of Staunton can offer a Swing Bed option. It is a step between being an acute care patient and returning home or to a nursing home. The Swing Bed option helps patients who have received acute care at the hospital, but are not well enough to return to their place of stay and they don't require or qualify for more acute care. The hospital can place them in the Swing Bed status and Medicare will pay for their change in care, which will allow them to stay and receive the therapy, care and recovery time needed to help the patient return to their nursing home or residence. The Swing Bed option helps the patient return home healthier so they are less likely to return with a more serious problem in the near future.

Since covid, the acute care hospitals don't have the beds or staffing available to keep a patient long-term. Larry looks at healthcare now as an electronic version of the days when doctors made home visits. The healthcare the hospital provides is more proactive versus reactive. They provide services to allow the community to live healthier lifestyle where their activities do not require restrictions and minimize their health problems.

Becoming part of Anderson Healthcare allows the Staunton hospital to use the same equipment with same providers and specialists that some of the larger providers are using. Being local allows a person to get immediate care to stabilize a person in the first few minutes of a traumatic health problem. That time can make the difference in saving lives or allowing a patient a quicker recovery.

An emergency care facility requires a heliport to get the patients in as quick as possible, get them stabilized and then transferred to a trauma hospital. The heliport at one time was located at the front of the hospital on the road, which required Staunton police officers to come and shutdown the traffic in front of the hospital. Now the heliport is located behind the hospital, but still requires a few safety checks to ensure there is clearance, lighting and objects in the area are secured.

Larry continues to look for ways for the hospital to meet the community healthcare needs, which includes its outpatient services, a specialist clinic, the family clinic or preventive care and medicine to provide healthy lives. He says that is where healthcare is going and will be the future for Community Hospital of Staunton. The hospital has a community event coming up on October 4th at Timber Lakes Golf Course. It is the 32nd Annual Friends of CHS Foundation Golf Tournament. On October 1st there is a soup making event that is free to the public, but you need to register. And on Oct 27th the hospital plans to have a Trunk or Treat at the hospital. Go to Community Hospital of Staunton on Facebook to follow and see all that our hospital has to offer. It's much more than emergency care facility!

Community Hospital of Staunton is critical access hospital providing health care services for inpatient, outpatient, emergency, & rehab. An Anderson Healthcare Partner^TM (Formerly Community Memorial Hospital)