Health committee backs Hillcrest partnership for Claremore obstetric services amid clinic transition

The Cherokee Nation Health Committee on Aug. 1 approved a resolution supporting a partnership with Hillcrest to provide obstetric services at the Claremore facility, committee members said during an otherwise routine health report and staffing update.

The resolution, read and moved by Johnny Kidwell, passed on a voice vote and will be forwarded to the full council for consideration. Committee members did not record individual roll-call votes during the approval.

The vote came as acting Claremore clinical director Micah Nix and Cherokee Nation Health Services clinical director Steven Jones briefed the committee on an ongoing transition at Claremore Indian Hospital. Nix said the hospital is “getting ready for the transition phase, looking at timelines for services and, getting ready with the with the staff and all of those, preparations we’re doing.”

Jones described staffing and hiring activity tied to that transition. He said the first, employee-only round of job offers produced what he described as strong acceptance: “We had a 189 acceptance so far,” and all 18 contracted commissioned officers accepted. On provider staffing he said 29 providers were offered contracts in the first round; 20 accepted, six were pending and three declined.

Jones also disputed circulating claims that provider levels would shrink: “So we’re not decreasing the number of providers in that clinic. That’s just simply not true,” he said. He said Claremore currently has one permanent primary care provider and locum coverage otherwise, and that the plan is to increase to four employed primary care providers; advanced practice registered nurses would increase from three to five. Jones discussed pediatric staffing and other adjustments as part of the transition.

Committee members asked about prenatal and childbirth education services. Sasha Black Fox Qualls asked whether Centering — a group prenatal model — would continue. Nix said Centering was “winding that service down, and it will end on September 30.” Jones added the Nation would “provide support” for prenatal needs while details of that support were still being worked out.

Jones also described a recent electronic health record outage that required the clinics to operate on emergency paper protocols for several days. “We had four days where our tool was not available to us,” he said, and he praised IT staff for working throughout the outage. Jones said most services continued and that elective surgeries displaced by the outage had plans to be rescheduled within two weeks. He added the patient portal was the last element still offline but that “we anticipate it’ll be on, by this afternoon.”

Separately, Jones said a work group examining dialysis and telemedicine for the reservation was finalizing a report for the chief’s office and expected it to be ready by Aug. 30. He said the group had coordinated with the chief of staff and deputy secretary of state to complete the report.

The committee’s motion in support of a Hillcrest partnership directs staff to forward the approved resolution to full council. Committee members did not attach additional implementation details or contractual terms during the meeting.

Members praised staff response to the outage and the progress on facilities. The meeting concluded with the committee sending the resolution forward for full-council review.