Kailyn joins the North Central AHEC region from the Bozeman Program Office as a temporary Program Coordinator.  She holds a Bachelor of Science in Health and Human Performance and a minor in Latino & Latin American Studies from Montana State University and is currently in pursuit of a Masters of Health Administration (MHA) at MSU-B.  Kailyn will be responsible for managing the NC AHEC regional pipeline programs through August. 

Kailyn's contact information:

kailyn.dorhauer@motana.edu or 406-994-7709.

The North Central AHEC office is proud to announce the winners of their first Public Health PSA Contest- Breanna Kirby and Mikalya Henke of Shelby High School. Breanna and Mikayla submitted their winning PSA entitled "Healthy Living," which outlines the behaviors and actions of young adults in their communities and the choices they can make regarding healthy lifestyles.

The objective of this contest was to encourage students to look at public health careers as careers of interest by working with local, county health departments to identify and expose the student's interest in healthcare careers, helping to minimize the impending healthcare professions shortage. As part of the application process, students were to interview their local public health department staff and investigate career explorations in the public health industry while determining a pertinent health issues affecting their local community. Once a topic is decided, the students were to develop/create a 30 to 60 second public service announcement.

The judgment criteria included the following:

-demonstration of knowledge obtained from public health department

-creativity

-professionalism/quality of video in terms of public use

-pertinence of health issue

-promotion of public health careers

Shelby High School will be receiving a state of the art, Celestron LCD microscope with a digital, built-in camera and an accompanying set of 100 anatomy microscope slides.

A job well done ladies! Congratulations!  

Click here to view the winning PSA!

The North Central and Western MT AHEC offices teamed up to provide a "Citizen Soldier- The Invisible Wounds of War" conference in Great Falls, on March 9, 2012 at Benefis Health Systems. Over a hundred and fifty healthcare professionals from across the state took part in the one-day workshop. While most of the participants were able to attend the conference on-site, nearly forty more attended via distance education sites, throughout the North Central region. The conference also held exhibitors, in which the conference participants could interact and learn from those experienced in delivering care to rural veterans. The speakers were largely representative of the North Central region, but others were also included from across the country, who each gave outstanding presentations and were on hand to be able to lend their expertise to all conference goers. This conference was interdisciplinary, offering continuing education credits for all healthcare professionals, and 6 contact hours of CME was approved for attending physicians and nurses. The topics of main interest included: veteran specific issues and care; Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD), Traumatic Brain Injury (TBI), Military Sexual Trauma (MST) and the impact on individuals and their families.

For more information contact:

Anna Buckner at 406-243-4746 or Jody Haines at 406-467-2455

Did you know the North Central AHEC office offers FREE, distance education opportunities for any rural healthcare facility in the NC region?

Currently, the following opportunity is available to any healthcare facility in the North Central region - Glacier, Toole, Liberty, Hill, Blaine, Pondera, Teton, Chouteau, Cascade, Judith Basin and Meagher counties.

CMS Utilization Review and Discharge Planning Regulations 2012:

Ensuring Compliance

WEBINAR/TELECONFERENCE

April 19, 2012

The target audience for this webinar is CEO, CFO, COO,CMO, CNO, Board Members, Utilization Review Committee, Case Mangers, Clinical Nursing Leadership, Clinical Leadership, Pharmacy Directors, Dietary Directors, Social Services, Discharge Planners, The Joint Commission Coordinators, Performance Improvement Directors, Risk Managers, Safety Officers, HIM Directors, Billing Office Directors, Business Office Managers, and anyone else who is interested in care transitions/preventing readmissions. 

NC AHEC is currently sponsoring any CAH (Critical Access Hospital) in the North Central region of Montana to bring CEU's directly to the hospital staff. Please take advantage of this opportunity through MHA...an association of Montana Health Care Providers. When filling out the registration, select PO option and insert "NC AHEC" so MHA knows to bill us instead of you. Normally $165 per line for MHA members and $210 per line for non-members. Only one line per facility, please. Contact Jennifer Wagnerto register via email. 

Registration materials are available at www.regonline.com/DL12007.

You may also register by faxing in the attached registration form to

(406) 443-3894 by April 12, 2012.

The problem: Many masters prepared social workers and post-doc psychology graduates at The University of Montana have a desire to practice in rural areas. However, because of the lack of licensed mental health practitioners in most of Montana's frontier counties, there is little opportunity for these graduates to receive the supervision hours required to obtain their licenses; a classic catch-22.  Further, critical access hospitals with rural health clinics would like to develop the Patient Centered Medical Home model, but have great difficulty recruiting behavioral health professionals.  

The solution: Western Montana AHEC and UM faculty in Social Work and Psychology developed a distance supervision process, in order to place a pre-licensed social worker and post-doc psychological resident with St. John's Lutheran Hospital, in Libby, MT. These professionals are hired as permanent employees. The Libby team has been in place since September 2011 and already has a waiting list. WMT-AHEC is currently recruiting two candidates to work at Madison Valley Medical Center in Ennis, MT.