Place of Work

St. John’s Lutheran hospital: 25 beds (3 critical care/ICU), one L&D suite, 4 bay emergency department/urgent care clinic, full radiological services including CT, digital mammography, and MRI, Cardiac and Respiratory Therapy, full lab services, OR with general, orthopedic, and visiting specialty surgical services. Key feature: old fashioned elevator (which only needs to go down to the basement and back up to the ground floor) with metal cage framing and sliding door. I rode it just so I could swing it shut and open again and see the ceiling pass under as I took it up from the cafeteria (novel, but probably not as cool as I thought it was going to be).

The hospital is a federally designated “critical access” hospital. This is a Medicaid designation, which I’m sure has a more complicated qualification and benefit structure than was explained to me. The gist of what I got out of it was that this designation allows the hospital to receive Medicaid payments of something like 35 cents to the dollar vs the standard 20 cents to the dollar for services rendered, but basically restricts the hospital size to 25 beds. The hospital is in the process of drawing up plans for a new building that will accommodate needs and services better. When I asked about the number of beds the new building will have the reply was quick: “25”.




The Libby Clinic is where I'll be spending a large portion of my time seeing patients. There are 3 MDs, one PA, and one Nurse Practitioner. The staff is very friendly and eager to teach and accommodate me. I even got my own office.