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The Power Eastern Oregon Podcast explores topics which affect small towns and rural communities in eastern Oregon and beyond. With the help of business and community partners, we will discuss the foundations of healthy communities, innovative new technologies, and challenges we all face. We’ll also explore the value of cooperatives and member-owned utilities and how Oregon Trail Electric Cooperative contributes to the health and growth of our service territory.
Paige Witham:
Welcome to the Power Eastern Oregon podcast,
where we celebrate the people and partnerships that make Eastern
Oregon thrive. I'm your host, Paige,
marketing and community relations coordinator at OTEC,
and today we have –
Jeremy Davis:
Jeremy Davis, president and CEO for Grande Ronde Hospital and
Clinics in La Grande,
Oregon.
Paige Witham:
Awesome. We're so happy to have you here today to talk about one
of the most obvious pillars of a healthy community,
which is healthcare. We're going to start this episode,
as we always do with our safety share.
February is American Heart Health Month.
According to the American Heart Association's 2026 update,
a person dies from cardiovascular disease every 34 seconds in the
US, and research suggests that up to 80% of heart disease deaths
can be prevented with small,
consistent lifestyle changes. So choose one small habit this
week,
like a ten minute walk during lunch,
swapping soda for water or checking your blood pressure daily.
Jeremy, what is one heart healthy tweak you've tried recently?
Jeremy Davis:
Well, actually, this is near and dear to my heart,
no pun intended.
One of the things that I've done recently is I purchased a
weighted vest.
Paige Witham:
Oh.
Jeremy Davis:
And so I started out wearing that as I walked on a treadmill to
add a little bit more resistance.
And now I'm actually back up to running.
And then I usually, during my cooldown,
I actually add the weighted vest,
so. and actually for Christmas,
I got my wife a weighted vest, so her and my daughters could wear
it. And so, they found that adding that weighted vest just adds a
little bit of resistance to their walks and some of their
activities.
Paige Witham:
Increasing the heart rate.
Jeremy Davis:
Increasing the heart rate.
Paige Witham:
Yeah. That's awesome. Oh, I love that.
Now I'm going to have to look up weighted vests.
And I want to start transitioning a little bit more towards the
hospital.
So what local tradition near your hospital makes it really feel
like home?
Jeremy Davis:
Oh, gosh. I mean, this is an easy one.
You know, I actually was born and raised in eastern Oregon,
in Baker City. So pretty much everything that I do outdoors
reminds me of home. But skiing in Anthony Lakes always is a warm
spot for me.
Hiking, mountain biking, hunting,
you know, riding four wheelers,
you know, pretty much anything outdoors here in eastern Oregon.
Paige Witham:
You can't beat it.
Jeremy Davis:
You can't beat it. And, you know,
when we used to live out of state,
every time we'd come home to visit family,
every time we rolled into eastern Oregon,
I'd roll down the windows and tell my kids,
hey, you smell that beautiful eastern Oregon air?
Paige Witham:
Yeah.
Jeremy Davis:
Baker City air.
Paige Witham:
Yeah.
Jeremy Davis:
For sure. Pretty much anything in eastern Oregon makes me feel
like home.
And, you know, working at the hospital here in eastern Oregon
certainly reminds me of that daily.
Paige Witham:
Yeah, I love that. And it's pretty amazing.
You roll up to Grande Ronde Hospital,
and you look and you see just this beautiful picture of that
outdoor landscape. You've got the hills right behind you and the
trees and everything,
and it's just a beautiful spot. So we're going to move into
community wins.
What upgrade or improvement are you most proud of,
and how has it made care easier locally?
And I know that you guys have like a wealth of that,
so I'm sure it was probably hard to choose just one.
Jeremy Davis:
Yeah. So, if I'm fortunate, I actually would pick two,
but they're kind of one in the same.
As you know, we just did a huge facility expansion project,
and while I'm extremely proud that it's going to improve
access to surgical services and address other programmatic needs
for our organization,
what's been really neat, I think,
over the last 6 to 8 months is as part of that addition,
we added a new cafeteria and dining space.
And what we have noticed as school started this year is we're
seeing more and more students that are coming up and having lunch
here.
Paige Witham:
That's awesome.
Jeremy Davis:
And I think for me, what warms my heart is that we're seeing many
of our employees who have children in these schools and their
children are now joining them for lunch.
And they're able to spend some time with their dad,
with their mom,
with their sister, with their cousin.
I was lucky, my daughter came up a couple Fridays ago,
and I was able to have lunch with her.
Paige Witham:
Yeah.
Jeremy Davis:
And it's brought a real energy,
I think, to our cafeteria at the lunch hour.
These kids have been professional and behaved well.
And now our cafeteria, they actually start cooking more pizzas in
advance because they know that these kids love to eat pizza and
burgers. And so that's probably that little thing that I did not
anticipate.
I mean, we always thought that having a new cafeteria dining
space may,
more folks may want to come up and dine here,
but to see these high schoolers and these kiddos come in and
having lunch with their loved ones,
I think that really is that human connection and that sense of
community that makes it all worth it.
Paige Witham:
Yeah. You hit the nail on the head there. I was going to mention
what a great community asset that is for not just the parents to
spend time with the kids. But now,
if one kid brings their friend up here,
now their friend is being tied into that community.
And it's just what a great opportunity.
That is super cool. Let's talk about teamwork.
Do you have a specific instance in mind that you'd like to
highlight about a time where your team just really knocked it out
of the park?
Jeremy Davis:
Well, the reality is that happens all the time here.
You know, when I think of teamwork,
I think, two things come to mind.
One is, is that we recently rolled out online scheduling for our
primary care and our pediatric
clinics. You know, I think, you know,
if we can book an airline flight with our phone,
we should be able to book a visit.
And I think about, you know, I have four children,
and I think about those younger years when you've got a crying
kid at night, and you're like, "Oh,
I need to go, they need to go see a doctor." But you got to wait
until 7 a.m. when somebody's going to,
you know, answer the phones.
Now, you could get on your phone and see if there's a same day
available,
appointment available, and you know that you've got a slot and
you can get in.
Paige Witham:
That's awesome.
Jeremy Davis:
But the one that I think that really comes to mind is we had a
long time oncologist that retired this past
year. And in rural hospitals across this country,
the top three services that are closing are OB,
behavioral health, and oncology.
And we knew that Doctor Bronstein was going to be retiring.
He actually gave me like three years notice.
And he said, "If you find somebody sooner,
you know, I'm happy to retire sooner." And it took us the full
three years. We weren't getting a lot of interested candidates.
And then in the last oh, it was actually about December of 2024,
we were able to connect with Doctor
Patrick Archie and with his help,
he was able to get us connected with Doctor Laura Talamo.
And so we were able to pivot to a new oncology model this summer
that preserved oncology
access. And they're absolutely fantastic physicians and
clinicians.
And as we've seen, oncology, you know,
cancer rates have increased.
We've seen an increase in colon cancers in eastern Oregon and
breast cancers and so on and so forth.
And we know that travel is a hardship.
And so that level of teamwork and the technology that has to be
in place and the staffing that
has to be in place and the processes and the procedures,
to me, it was all driven by our passion for our patients.
And, so that really stood out to me.
Paige Witham:
That's awesome. What a great testament to you guys being able to
maintain a system and build a team at the same time,
when it's become a struggle in many areas.
Let's talk about a time when the hospital and the community
supported one another,
and we kind of touched on that just a little bit,
kind of with the cafeteria story.
But I'm sure that there are plenty of other points that you can
look to.
Jeremy Davis:
Well, you know, a subtle example is what we call p-facts.
So patient family advisory councils.
So we have two of these that are set up.
And really these are opportunities for the hospital to connect
with community members,
current and former patients to better understand their
experience,
both positive and negative, to help drive policies and procedures
and decisions here at the hospital.
And so, you know, that I think is a really small way,
you know, we've done food drives to help with food
insecurity. And, and then, you know,
a big one that was in the news is just the Tiger Homes.
You know, we partner with the La Grande School District.
There is a shortage of housing and especially workforce housing.
And, you know, we have some staff that come and go and,
we have some providers that come and go.
And so having stable housing and consistent housing for them to
be able to stay in.
So the fact that we were able to partner with the school
district,
they were able to use it as a teaching opportunity to try to grow
those trades.
And then we agreed to buy the Tiger Home so they knew that it was
sold and that they could continue to invest in that program.
I think shows a great example of a public private partnership.
And really, I think if you were to ask George,
I mean, I don't want to speak on behalf of Superintendent
Mendoza, but I think the whole goal of this really wasn't for the
benefit of Grande Ronde Hospital or for the benefit of Grande
School District. It really was for the kids and for the
community.
And to me, that's, when you're driven on the same purpose and
same vision and mission,
great things come together.
Paige Witham:
Absolutely. That is super cool. And I think that's something,
as people are listening to this podcast,
that they can maybe take to their local school districts as sort
of a model of like,
hey, this could really work because that's workforce and housing
are not unique
to just La Grande or Baker City or even just rural America.
I mean, it's pretty widespread. So it's a really exciting
opportunity for people to kind of develop that skill set in kids
and kind of solve a problem at the same time.
Jeremy Davis:
Yeah.
Paige Witham:
So we're going to move into talking about innovation and
training.
I would love to know what innovation you're most excited about.
Jeremy Davis:
You know, I would say it's a two-edged sword.
I'm really excited about it. But I'm also scared,
and it's AI.
Paige Witham:
Oh, yeah.
Jeremy Davis:
You know, we see a lot of promise with it.
It's accelerating extremely quickly.
But yet, you know, we also want to make sure we understand its
potentials,
its limitations, and have some reasonable safeguards in place
because obviously,
health care, there's a lot of data.
There's a lot of information. There's a lot of trust that is
established between us and our patients and our community.
And so we want to make sure that any investments we make into AI
and technology achieve the expected
outcomes of improving the experience of our patients and their
clinical care.
Paige Witham:
Absolutely.
Jeremy Davis:
You know, one thing that we've rolled out is,
it's called ambient listening.
So, you know, unfortunately in medicine,
you know, a lot of our clinicians,
our doctors and our nurse practitioners and physician assistants,
you know, there's a lot of typing.
There's a lot of charting, and so for a long period of time we
used scribes.
So, you know, it started out where you had physical people in the
same room,
and they were the one that were taking the notes.
Then we went to virtual scribes,
where people were like on a camera and listening in.
And they were, you know, these were often medical students.
And so they got to have a little bit of a job while they're doing
it.
And they helped our providers be more efficient.
Well, now we're able to use a phone,
and it's cheaper, it's more accurate.
And we've seen that it has really improved the productivity and
improved the the satisfaction of our
clinicians that have adopted the technology.
And so, yeah, you know, I feel like we've been at the forefront
in terms of technology as a rural hospital.
We've been recognized as the most wired.
I can't tell you how many times,
I think it's nine times. So we've always been kind of early
adopters of technology and embraced it.
And so we're continuing to investigate and evaluate where AI may
be a tool to help us better deliver quality outcomes and better
care.
Paige Witham:
Absolutely. I actually had an instance this week where I took my
little girl in to the doctor and was just talking about,
you know, she had some red blotchy spots,
and it's like, "Oh, I don't know what it could be.
It could be this could be that." And I felt like I was talking
incredibly fast,
and I was like, "I'm sorry, do you need to chart?
Like I feel bad." And they're like,
"No, I've actually got it." And then looked back at my chart
after the appointment, and it was perfect.
Jeremy Davis:
Perfect. Yeah.
Paige Witham:
It even had my "ums" in there. It was really awesome,
though, to know that what I was saying was being accurately
documented at all times. And it's not the doctor trying to have
their primary job and get that done and get me the
answers, and they still had the notes that they could fall back
on later.
It was awesome.
Jeremy Davis:
And what I think is great too, is what we're seeing with a lot of
our providers is now they're able to have that more personal
contact with the patient, eye-to-eye contact,
really focused on them instead of trying to type and look and
again, you know, a lot of exam rooms and patient rooms were built
before
this technology was in place. And so when you add a computer
screen to one of these rooms,
it's usually in a spot that's not great for that line of sight.
And so this technology really is allowing that clinician to be
more present.
And it's a win-win for both the patient and for the provider.
Paige Witham:
Absolutely. That's awesome. So there are partnerships that we all
kind of
experience just as a part of doing business.
But there are specific ones that really help us elevate maybe a
program or a new
technology or a community outreach project.
And so, I'd love to know what partnership has made a really
meaningful difference.
I know, like I said, we have them all the time,
but if there was one that you wanted to highlight.
Jeremy Davis:
You know, I, again, I go back to the Tiger Homes and,
you know, since I already kind of talked about that one,
I think, really I think when I think about partnerships,
I just I think about what makes Eastern Oregon great.
You know, I routinely meet with the president of EOU.
I routinely talk with the superintendent Mendoza.
I routinely, you know, meet with county commissioners and the
mayor and city officials and state officials and,
you know, to try to understand again,
how can we better partner to better serve the community that
we're privileged to serve? You know,
when I look at Grande Ronde Hospital,
you know, we represent almost 5% of the workforce here in Union
County.
And almost, I think, $90 million in wages and benefits.
So not only are we a critical piece in terms of healthcare
infrastructure,
but we're also a huge economic driver.
And that's not lost on us. And so,
you know, I think, you know, whether it's OTEC,
whether it's, you know, we've been pursuing a lot of grants
lately to try to advance our mission and our vision.
And so it's been neat to partner with folks like OTEC and another
granting organizations and other businesses in town who have
offered letters of support that have given us the additional legs
needed to make our application strong,
to hopefully bring funds to the community to better serve our
vested interests.
Paige Witham:
Absolutely. And I love that we're able to partner in that grant
writing and editing and all of the
above can be quite an undertaking.
And so being able to just have someone that you can go to and
say,
"Hey, I need a letter of support." Having those community
partnerships is great,
and I love that you highlighted how you're going to other
organizations to see how you can partner,
because like you said, 5% is no small number.
And so it's pretty, pretty impressive that you're able to
maintain those relationships and also provide those services to
your employees because they're also members of the community.
So let's talk about, we kind of just hit on community resilience.
So we're going to go to what is one surprising thing people may
not know about your hospital?
Jeremy Davis:
You know every physician, nurse practitioner,
licensed
care, social worker, nurse, pretty much anybody who ever comes
and interviews here is always surprised at the
breadth and depth of services that we provide.
You know, I think when you hear the word rural,
you automatically think of like Doctor Quinn,
Medicine Woman, that we've got a doctor that's riding a horse to
the four corners of the county.
Paige Witham:
Yeah.
Jeremy Davis:
Providing care, that there's just one stoplight.
And granted, there are some communities in eastern Oregon that
have one stoplight or no stoplight at all.
Paige Witham:
Sure.
Jeremy Davis:
But I think, you know, movies and the TV and media kind of
portray rural as kind of this
lesser sophistication. And everybody who comes and sees us and
walks our halls and gets
to meet our team and our staff,
they are just beyond impressed at the level of services,
the specialties that we offer that,
you know, many of these patients,
you know, you don't really have to travel.
You know, we often hear that transportation is one of the top
reasons why folks can't get access to the care they need.
Well, if you can make sure those services are available,
then transportation ends up not really being that big of an
issue. It's more organic of just getting them transported from
their home to a local clinic,
not trying to get them to a specialist 2 or 3 hours away.
And so as we've added rheumatology,
you know, we've got a strong orthopedics program,
we've got oncology. We've got, you know,
ear, nose and throat, and pediatrics and maternal services,
you know, and so many, so much more.
So the fact that we've got, you know,
over 90 employed providers here,
we've grown from about 60 employee providers seven years ago.
And so that breadth and depth, we are seeing more and more
patients that are able to stay local for their care.
And when that happens, I think we all win.
Paige Witham:
Yeah, absolutely. So I am so grateful that you were able to take
time today to talk with us,
to talk to our listeners, to talk to Eastern Oregon about just
the amazing work that Grande Ronde is doing in the space
of healthcare. Is there anything that you would like to highlight
to our listeners that we didn't talk about today?
Jeremy Davis:
No, I'm just grateful for the opportunity to maybe shine a little
bit of a spotlight of what a jewel I think Grande Ronde Hospital
is in eastern Oregon. You know,
in a world when we're seeing a lot of news around cuts in health
care and uncertainty in healthcare,
I hope the listeners will see that Grande Ronde Hospital is a
place that is stable. It's growing,
it's expanding, and we're prepared to meet,
you know, their healthcare needs.
And so, we appreciate the community support,
and we appreciate OTEC's support,
and we're grateful that you guys came to visit us today. And,
yeah.
So we just hope folks have a great February.
It is Heart Health Month, and we do have a Doc Talk that is
coming up on February 26th with
Doctor Gardner. She is a great cardiologist,
and it's going to be from 5:30 to 7 p.m.
at the Presbyterian Friendship Center here in La Grande.
And it's going to be an informative interaction with her,
where folks will learn more about their heart and how to stay
healthy.
Paige Witham:
That's awesome. So make sure you guys tune in to that.
Head over, can they find this on your website?
Jeremy Davis:
Yep. Yeah.
Paige Witham:
Okay, great.
Jeremy Davis:
Go to GRH.org, and they'll find more information about the Doc
Talk and other services and outreach efforts that we're doing.
Paige Witham:
That's awesome. Thank you again.
And as always, we'll talk to you guys next time on the Power
Eastern Oregon podcast.