Pueblo, CO, Is Expanding Access to Health Care

UCHealth Parkview

Health care has long been an important component of Pueblo. In fact, three years before officially being incorporated as a city in 1885, the growing settlement known as Pueblo already had two hospitals. 

More than 140 years later, the merged descendant of those early facilities continues to serve the Pueblo population under the banner of CommonSpirit St. Mary-Corwin Hospital. 

With a medical staff of more than 500, St. Mary-Corwin offers a nationally recognized cancer center, a designated Breast Center of Excellence, robotic-assisted surgical technology and a dedicated Joint Replacement Center. 

Meanwhile, Pueblo’s century-old Parkview Medical Center recently joined the UCHealth network, combining the comfort of longstanding local familiarity with the strength of a regional 14-hospital health system. UCHealth is investing nearly $200 million over a 10-year span into Parkview and the Pueblo community. 

“This partnership gives Parkview everything that UCHealth has to offer as far as innovation and health care upgrades,” communication strategist Todd Seip says. “We went from kind of a small hospital to a huge hospital almost overnight. Our services and our ability to care for patients now has the complete support of the UCHealth system, which has just been fantastic.” 

UCHealth Parkview

Innovative Offerings 

Since the merger, UCHealth Parkview has steadily expanded its programs and increased its ability to provide even greater care for the Pueblo region. These include: 

• UCHealth Parkview’s rank in the top 10th percentile in the nation for positive sepsis outcomes with assistance from the virtual sepsis monitoring program. 
• A partnership with American Medical Response and UCHealth that has Pueblo’s emergency medical teams now carrying and administering replacement blood in the field for treating traumatic injuries. 
• A virtual admission nurse model and additional virtual health services that have improved patient flow and helped patients receive more timely care. 
• The addition of DOCLine, UCHealth’s care coordination platform, that has streamlined hospital admissions and transfers, so more patients can stay close to home. 
• UCHealth Parkview and the Sangre de Cristo Weight Loss Institute earning national accreditation as a comprehensive center from the Metabolic and Bariatric Surgery Accreditation and Quality Improvement Program. 
• And Parkview joining the Biobank, a partnership between UCHealth and University of Colorado Anschutz Medical Campus that provides patients the opportunity to contribute to genetic research and the future of personalized medicine. 

Communication Is Key 

While modern technology obviously is a crucial element to quality health care, old-school verbal communication between patients and medical professionals also is important. That can sometimes be difficult for patients whose natural language is something other than English. 

UCHealth Parkview helps overcome those types of language barriers with on-site interpreters for Spanish-speaking patients. In addition, the hospital provides video connections with interpreters for nearly 50 languages and audio connections for up to 350 languages. 

“UCHealth is able to accommodate almost any patient with any language,” says Scott Suckow, senior director for Language and Cultural Services at UCHealth. “We can provide nearly instantaneous quality communication for most needs. So, patients can feel very confident that they can communicate well with doctors, nurses and care teams.” 

Emerald Oport, who was born and raised in Pueblo, serves as the coordinator of interpreter services for UCHealth. She has experienced firsthand how the seemingly simple act of communicating can help improve patient outcomes. 

“When you have a qualified medical interpreter, the patients get the complete story about what is happening with their medical care,” Oport says. “I’ve had patients where the doctor is able to give them more coaching on taking their medications because I’m there to interpret. Then when the patient comes back, their health is improving because the communication is there. 

“For the patient to be able to talk directly to the doctor through me can make such a difference. They feel reassured and are able to clarify what is happening, which provides a fuller picture. You see them relax and open up. They go from being quiet to being chatty.” 

That is just one of the many things worth talking about these days when it comes to the continued expansion of access to health care in the Pueblo region.