For more than 50 years, Fairfield Memorial Hospital has been meeting the health care needs of the community.

The 25-bed critical access hospital offers a wide range of services including a 24-hour emergency department, acute inpatient care, outpatient clinics and a full-service laboratory. It has recently added services like nuclear medicine and swing bed therapy to better meet the growing needs of the community, explained hospital administrator Michael Williams.

New handrails throughout the patients’ wing, allow the hospital to offer swing bed rehabilitation, a short-term rehab program is available to patients who have undergone a knee replacement or other similar procedure.

“Our staffers use the handrails to walk their patients as part of their therapy,” Williams said.

A new computer system, the COW, or computers on wheels, were introduced to the hospital’s nurses in January. Williams said nurses now use the portable computer system to complete their charts, instead of filing out the information on paper forms.

“We will eventually be going paperless,” Williams said. “We’re not there yet, but we’re moving in that direction.”

The administrator predicts it will be at least a year before paper charts are eliminated and all the hospital departments are trained on the system.

Another plus to patients, especially those under the age of 12, is the hospital’s first pediatrics patient room. The room was designed by Fairfield Center High School student Diamond Moore, as part of her senior seminar class. Moore, along with the help of her mother and volunteers, have decorated the room. New window treatments and blankets highlight the brightly painted walls and new tile.

Williams said the room will be beneficial to the hospital.

‘A couple years ago we had about 80 pediatric patients admitted to the hospital, where in the last year we only had about 10,” he said. “It has been a drop. So we are focusing on peds, and admitting peds to the hospital so we can get those numbers back up.”

As immediate changes are taking place around the hospital, Williams knows more upgrades are needed to ensure the hospital’s future in the community.

One goal, he said, is to expand its outpatient services, which include labs, respiratory therapy, rehabilitation and cardiac therapy and radiology.

“As time goes on in the future, these areas will probably be around a lot longer than the inpatient services, as far as growth,” Williams said. “We average 11 patients a day in the hospital, but we average a lot of patients on our out patient side.”

Most of the hospital’s admissions come from its emergency department.

In the future, Williams said he would also like to make the patient exam rooms in the emergency department larger and more private. Right now there are three main exam rooms and one smaller room that doesn’t offer much privacy to patients.

Other services offered by the hospital are social work services, home health care and diabetic counseling and education. The diabetes center is accredited by the American Diabetes Association for meeting the National Standards for Diabetes Self-Management Education.

“We have an excellent home health program,” Williams said. “They provide physical therapy, occupational therapy and speech therapy in the home.”

A registered dietician can assist patients who are receiving care at-home care.

According to Williams, although the hospital is constantly making needed improvements, it just like other hospitals continue to face problems.

“It is a difficult time in health care,” he said. “But we are making progress.”