Rural Hospital Provider Assistance Program - Donalsonville Hospital, Inc. is a 41-bed rural acute care hospital serving Seminole County and surrounding communities in Southwest Georgia. The hospital provides essential emergency, inpatient, outpatient, laboratory, imaging, surgical, rehabilitation, respiratory, swing bed, and pulmonary services in a rural area affected by workforce shortages, transportation barriers, chronic disease burden, financial hardship, and limited access to alternative hospital services. The nearest alternative acute care hospital is approximately 28 miles and 40 minutes away. Through the project Operational Stabilization Through Workforce Education, Clinical Technology, and Facility Automation, Donalsonville Hospital will implement three coordinated activities that support the maintenance of health care providers and continued access to essential health services. First, the hospital will purchase and deploy five Ergotron Mosaic mobile clinical workstations with electric lift, LCD display/PC capability, AC power, and related accessories. The carts will support bedside patient identification, barcode scanning of patient identification bracelets, medication verification and administration workflows, access to clinical information, and point-of-care documentation. This investment will improve access to reliable bedside technology and support efficient use of limited nursing time. Second, the hospital will implement HealthStream workforce education and policy management services. The solution will support employee onboarding, learning administration, role-specific education and training, completion monitoring, competency and checklist workflows, quality management, continuing education, policy management, and centralized employee access to current policies and educational resources. Donalsonville Hospital employs approximately 403 employees and onboards approximately 130 new employees annually. The project will replace fragmented manual processes with a more standardized infrastructure for workforce education, onboarding, policy access, and training documentation. Third, the hospital will purchase two Sparkoz TN10 robotic scrubber/sweeper systems with workstations, docking stations, and related accessories. The systems will supplement, not replace, environmental services personnel by automating appropriate repetitive floor-care functions. This will allow staff to redirect time toward patient room cleaning, discharge and transfer room turnover, isolation room cleaning, high-touch surface disinfection, restroom sanitation, spill response, and other infection prevention activities requiring human judgment. The project will be implemented during the 12-month period of performance through coordinated participation by hospital administration, nursing, pharmacy, information technology, human resources, education, compliance, quality, infection prevention, environmental services, and finance. The hospital will monitor equipment deployment and utilization, staff training, patient identification and medication workflow performance, employee enrollment and training completion, onboarding and policy management measures, robotic equipment utilization, estimated square footage cleaned, and environmental services labor hours redirected to higher-priority cleaning functions. The project will strengthen the systems and tools surrounding the hospital’s existing workforce rather than create temporary positions dependent on continued grant support. The anticipated result is improved operational stability, stronger patient safety infrastructure, more consistent workforce education and onboarding, improved environmental services productivity, and sustained local access to essential rural health care services.
