Newsletter Aug. 28 2014Don’t forget to

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Chief of Medicine celebrates 40 years

For 40 years, Dr. John M. Weed III has practiced family medicine in Rockdale, Texas.

Forty years seeing patients about all sorts of issues. Forty years of going to the same job, doing the same career, in the same town, every day.

Society has changed a lot since 1974, even in Rockdale. Dr. Weed grew up in Rockdale, the son of one of Rockdale’s more prominent couples. As The Rockdale Reporter noted in its front page story earlier this month, “Dr. Weed is as familiar as US 79 to just about everyone in town.”

But when Dr. Weed looks back on his 40 years as a Rock-dale physician, he reflects on how different his future looked when he returned to Rockdale after medical school.

“I didn’t plan on staying in Rockdale for 40 years. But I didn’t really plan on staying somewhere else either,” Dr. Weed told Mike Brown, the Rockdale Reporter editor who coinciden-tally is also celebrating his 40th year in Rockdale this month.

“There have been many times where it would have been

In July 1974, a young doctor named Weed moved to Rockdale. Today, he leads the company—and the community—into the future of healthcare.

A welcoming article published in the local newspaper, the Rockdale Reporter, about the community’s newest member in July 1974. The Reporter wrote a very kind, in-depth piece on Dr. Weed’s 40th anniversary on their front page earlier this month.

Dr. John Weed

continued on Page 2

LR Toxicology Lab set to open in SeptemberAs you may have heard or read,

Little River Healthcare is building its own Toxicology lab, set to open in early September.

The gray and blue Toxicology lab is nearly identical in structure and size to the neighboring Ad-ministration building next to the Rockdale Hospital.

What is a Toxicology lab?Toxicology labs are primarily

used for discovering the existence of chemicals in the body through urine or blood testing (more com-monly called drug testing).

Generally, most medical centers do not house their own Toxicology labs. Instead, they collect specimen (i.e. urine) from patients and ship the specimen to an outsourced Toxicology lab for testing.Who uses a Toxicology Lab?

Along with medical centers, businesses who drug test their employees typically provide a specimen collection service, which then sends the specimen to the actual Toxicology lab. You may also have heard of “forensic toxicology”,

wherein police authorities send specimen of crime suspects or of deceased persons to a Tox-icology lab to determine if drugs may have been involved in a crime or death. What tests will LR’s Toxicology Lab perform?

The Little River Healthcare Toxicology lab will not perform Forensic or Postmortem Toxicology tests, nor will it perform drug testing for athletic associations. For now, Little River

Healthcare will only perform basic toxicology testing.Why did Little River build this Lab?

As you can already imagine, Little River Healthcare will benefit immensely by housing its own Toxicology lab. Not only will we save on the costs of outsourcing Toxicology, but our lab may be-come the outsourced lab of choice for external medical practices.

Along with this new Toxicology lab comes new employment op-portunities. Little River has hired Caroline Fraser to direct the new Toxicology lab in Rockdale.

As more external medical cen-ters across Texas employ Little River to perform Toxicology tests, we will hire employees in those regions to collect specimen and deliver test results. Several employees have already been hired by Little River’s Toxicology specialist Todd Cook.

One more way Little River Healthcare is providing growth in our communities.

Network NewsletterIf you have any LRHC news for the Network Newsletter, please email zzavoral@lrhealthcare.com with the story.

Aug/Sept Birthdays28th Myra Perez28th Mary Matthews29th William Ledbetter29th Cook, Yvonne King30th Stephanie Lopez30th Sheila Lopez30th Barbara McNiel31st Maria Banda

September1st Martha Chevalier4th Robert Blake5th Teesa Foxworth6th Carol Aycock7th Toby Gill7th MaryGrace Villanueva8th Sarah Cambell9th Cassandra Rodriguez9th Denisa Henson10th Lori Ingram11th Barbara Valk12th Elizabeth Rodriguez13th Ruth Lopez13th Darush Rahmani14th Jacqueline Sosa14th Janese Poe14th Teresa Corbin14th Katy Dodds15th Kimberly Howarton

16th Dayla Gonzales16th Erica Limbrick16th Danielle Pounders17th Barbara Caldera18th Desiree Gossett18th Irene Hernandez18th Felipe Gomez19th Peggy Boney19th Daniel Firer19th Jonathan Parks20th Katalin Brown21st Kevin Caperton22nd Sarah Williford22nd Elizabeth Mattson22nd Juana Bonilla22nd Clay Hirt22nd Nicole Vicknair23rd Dorris Black23rd Erica Gildon25th Armando Fuentes27th William Turk27th Laurel Herzog27th John Tucay28th Ramona Butala28th Stacy Montelongo30th Martha Galvan30th Kacie Cargill30th Victor Leyva

Weed, cont’d from page 1easier to leave Rockdale,” Dr. Weed said. “It’s been a very rewarding 40 years.”

Of those “rewarding 40 years”, Dr. Weed has most enjoyed raising his family, with his lovely wife Jeanie. They have two sons, Michael and Joey, and are expecting a second grandchild this year.

“A family doctor can only survive based on the strength of his own family,” Dr. Weed said. “They have helped me become a good doctor more than medical school could.”

Not only has his family and his city changed a lot over 40 years, the medical industry has become a much different business.

“It used to be more of a doctor-driven indus-try, now it’s more of a government-driven indus-try,” Dr. Weed said.

When Dr. Weed came to Rockdale in 1974, he was a family doctor as well as a hospitalist, the radiologist for his own imaging, and the Ob/Gyn.

While healthcare continued to progress, ownership of the hospital and clinics in Rock-dale changed hands several times. Dr. Weed was often part of community efforts to keep the Rockdale Hospital. But Dr. Weed said he believes it’s now on the right track for good.

“Jeff Madison has greatly improved the quali-ty of care in Rockdale.”

ALS challenges soak Little River

LITTLE RIVERTM

Several doctors and Little River Healthcare staff took the recently popular ALS Ice Bucket Challenge in August. The ALS Ice Bucket Chal-lenge started as a small way for peo-ple to show their support for those suffering from Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis, more commonly known as Lou Gehrig’s Disease.

ALS attacks nerve cells throughout the body, causing full-body paralysis, leaving the afflicted unable to move. The point behind the ALS Ice Bucket Challenge was for participants to feel, if only for one second, the feeling of being frozen in their own body, somewhat similar to how someone with ALS feels.

But far more important than the ice, the water, and the bucket is the donation side of the activity. Those “nominated” to do the challenge and refuse to dump ice on their heads are expected to donate instead, though most who do dump ice on their heads also donate anyway. Because the ALS Ice Bucket Challenge has gone viral via social media, the ALS Association has collected more than $94 million in the last 30 days, according to its website, ALSA.org, where donations are accepted.

Left: gastroenterologist Dr. Richard Tay takes

the challenge at King’s Daughters Clinic in

Temple on Aug. 21. Dr. Tay challenged podiatry

Dr. Ed McCaffrey and family medicine Dr. Liz Mattson (top right together), who

accepted on Aug. 26. At right, family & sports

medicine Dr. Ryan Fowler gets doused by

his wife and son.

Bastrop gets new CTIn late July, the Little River Healthcare –

Rockdale Hospital passed its DNV (Det Norske Veritas) quality survey, just a few weeks after the Cameron Hospital passed its own DNV survey.

“The (Rockdale Hospital) staff is your greatest asset,” DNV surveyors remarked.

Little River chooses to be surveyed and ac-credited by DNV in our ongoing commitment to the highest quality standards in healthcare. This accreditation is renewed every three years and evaluated by DNV on an annual basis to ensure compliance with all current regulations. The 2014 survey was the Rockdale Hospital’s second, having passed initially in 2011.

LR Quality Assurance Director Kassy Havel said that while passing the DNV survey is a major accomplishment, we must, as company, practice “continual readiness” in all of our quali-ty care measurements.

DNV also recommended the Rockdale Hospital for ISO certification (International Standardization Organization), which recogniz-es hospitals’ quality management for complying with the highest best practice standards interna-tionally. Fewer than 40 hospitals in the US are ISO certified, and Rockdale may soon become one of those uniquely recognized hospitals.

Rockdale Hospital passes DNV survey

Little River Healthcare - Bastrop Imaging had a “new-to-them” 16-slice CT machine installed this month. To install, window panes at the Imaging center were removed and re-installed.