Hospital Serves Jasperites
Monticello’s Jasper Memorial Hospital (JMH), a non-profit, in patient hospital licensed for 17 total beds, is a certified Critical Access Hospital (CAH). It is one of only 30 out of 36 rural hospitals (out of 120 rural counties in Georgia) designated as a CAH.
It requires an accreditation process and is defined as a hospital that provides acute healthcare services to rural, underserved communities. Some of the defining criteria that a CAH must meet includes having 24-hour emergency care (emergency room), having no more than 25 inpatient beds and housing patients for an average length of stay of three to five days.
In part, its combined CAH and non-profit status allows the hospital to accept tax deductible donations. It also allows the hospital to participate in the Georgia HEART Hospital Program, a program that allows rural hospitals to increase their funding and thereby offer more care and services for its community members, through income tax credits to individual and corporate taxpayers who contribute to qualifying rural hospitals.
Its CAH status, along with a Medicare provider agreement, also allows JMH to offer a Swing-Bed service. This service allows patients to continue receiving services in a hospital even though acute care is no longer required for the patient. A swing-bed hospital can provide a complete range of care and services that include, but aren’t limited to, Physical Therapy, Occupational Therapy, IV Medication Therapy, Speech Therapy, monitoring of vital signs and wound care.
Approximately 100 employees work primarily at JMH and/or are shared with The Retreat Nursing Home. Here is a snapshot of a handful of those employees.
JMH’s Director of Nursing, Kelley Raney, an RN for 20 years, has worked at JMH for 11 years and prior to that worked at The Retreat. She described Swing Bed services as particularly helpful for patients who have spent time in a hospital for orthopedic surgeries like hip or knee replacements, strokes, pneumonia, heart failure or other chronic illness but are not quite ready to be discharged to their home. The program is traditionally used for 14 to 20 days and is insurance and referral based. “It can help patients recover to be close to home and to be taken care of by people the patients and families know, especially our older populations,” Raney added. Raney, a mother of two, is a community volunteer in her home county of Butts and currently serves as Vice Chair on the Butts County Board of Education.
Samantha Mashburn, RN, a fifth generation Jasper County resident and the Assistant Director of Nursing since January 2024, agrees. Prior to starting at JMH in 2016, she worked as a Licensed Practical Nurse (LPN) at The Retreat primarily providing wound care services and issuing medications. “I miss working everyday with the patients,” she said of her new management job, confessing she fills in as a floor nurse when needed. In her off time she enjoys gardening and reading and spending time with her husband and eight-year-old daughter.
Floor nurse Charidy McWilliams, RN, is a neighboring Butts County native now married, still lives on the dirt road she grew up on, along with the entire side of her mother’s family. A self-described family person who enjoys barrel racing when not at work, she finds JMH a good fit for her family values. Graduating from Gordon State College in 2021 with her Associate of Sciences Nursing (ASN) degree, she has been at JMH since December 2023 and is currently working on her Masters of Science in Nursing (MSN). “Here, I’m happy. I can provide quality care,” she said and according to McWilliams, unlike other work places she was employed prior to landing at JMH.
“Working here is very family oriented. The teamwork here is crazy,” she said, “It’s all hands on deck. Everybody helps.”
Patient Care Tech (PCT) and Certified Nursing Assistant (CNA) Sharita Wise has worked at JMH for five and a half years and spent two years working as a CNA at The Retreat. She, like many others, started her career in the medical field after completing the CNA program offered through the Health Occupation classes at Jasper County High School (JCHS). A lifelong Jasper County native, she knows many of the patients, who walk through the doors at JMH and finds comfort in the knowledge she can help take care of her community members. Wise shared, “I like the satisfaction of taking care of people.”
She views her work as a CNA and PCT as one of the most important jobs on the floor, explaining that CNAs are often the first point of contact for patients and the one patients have the most interaction with.
“Being a CNA teaches you empathy and patience and instills in you a lot of values,” Wise said, adding, “Once a CNA, always a CNA.”RN Ciera Johnson, a Jasper County native and an RN for six years, also started her career as a CNA in a nursing home by way of the JCHS Health Occupation classes.
After the birth of her son in 2010, she continued her climb in the nursing field, becoming an LPN and then an RN. Working nights at JMH, she is in school in Abraham Baldwin Agricultural College’s (ABAC) online nursing program pursuing her Bachelor of Science in Nursing degree. Johnson plans to continue her schooling to become a Nurse Practitioner (NP), specializing in mental health. A dedicated mom of two children, her pursuit of a career in nursing started with her passion of wanting to be able to care for and give back to her grandmother, who Johnson says raised and took care of her. “I like taking care of people. I like to treat people how I’d like to have my family treated,” Johnson said, adding “I am a CNA at heart. Being a CNA made me the nurse I am today.”
JMH, in addition to its acute care and emergency services, also offers a wide range of additional services for both in-patients and for community members on an out patient basis through its Rehabilitation, Laboratory, Dietary, and Radiology Departments. And, JMH offers all of these services with a dedicated staff that not only treats each other as family, they also treat their patients as family.
