If you're considering buying or building a new home in Ellis county then don't rule out the city of Midlothian! This growing community has so much to offer to its residents including fast and convenient access to healthcare with the brand new Methodist Midlothian Medical Center that just opened! Today we have Administrator Jary Ganske, and Kasey Cheshier, Community Relations & Volunteer Coordinator, to tell us all about the new hospital, the many benefits it brings to the community, and what it means for you as a current or future resident of Midlothian. 

To Learn more about Methodist Midlothian Medical Center visit their website at MethodistHealthSystem.org/MethodistMidlothianMedicalCenter or contact them at 469.846.2000

S2 Ep17_That New Hospital in Midlothian EVERYBODY is Talking About! (Jary Ganske & Kasey Cheshier).mp3

Intro: [00:00:03] Welcome Home, a podcast brought to you by John Houston Homes. Join hosts, Chelsi Frazier and Whitney Pryor, as they walk you through the exciting adventure of your home buying and building journey.

Whitney Pryor: [00:00:18] Thank you for joining us on today's episode of the Welcome Home Podcast. I've got Chelsi here with me. Hi, Chelsi!

Chelsi Frazier: [00:00:26] Hello.

Whitney Pryor: [00:00:27] How are you doing?

Chelsi Frazier: [00:00:28] I'm great. I'm really excited about today's podcast!

Whitney Pryor: [00:00:31] Who do we have on today?

Chelsi Frazier: [00:00:33] Today we are talking about the city of Midlothian, but more specifically, about an organization many people know and respect as one of the leading health care providers in North Texas. We're talking with Methodist Health System. They've recently opened a beautiful new medical center just right here in Midlothian. A lot of people have been really excited to have that hospital right here in our own backyard and just top notch health care. I'm excited to talk about that with Jary Ganske, he's an Administrator and Kasey Cheshier, he's the Community Relations and Volunteer Coordinator, so welcome to the show.

Jary Ganske: [00:01:11] Well thank you, we're thrilled to be here!

Chelsi Frazier: [00:01:13] Great!

Whitney Pryor: [00:01:15] We are super excited that you guys are here. I know I've been watching the construction of the hospital go up over the past year or however long you've guys been doing that, but it looks beautiful. To have another option in this area for health care in our community is super exciting. We're really glad that you guys are here.

Chelsi Frazier: [00:01:35] Yeah, I think what makes this even more special is that access to health care in an emergency room is very important, a great thing to have in your community and a reason that people want to live in an area. What's awesome about Methodist, even more special about them, is just their commitment to the community that they serve. We've seen that in Mansfield, Dallas and every other place that they exist. Even before actually having their hospital in Midlothian, you saw them plug into the community and really get involved. We'll talk a little bit more about that today, overall, the benefit of that in Midlothian and what that means for homeowners.

Jary Ganske: [00:02:16] We appreciate that.

Chelsi Frazier: [00:02:18] Before we jump in, can you just tell us a little bit about yourself? How long have you been with Methodist and what you do there? We can start with Jary.

Jary Ganske: [00:02:26] Okay, sure. I'm a native Wacoen. I spent many years there as president of a health and wellness organization. I started working with the hospitals here in the Dallas-Fort Worth area about 15, 18 years ago. I was with Texas Health Resources for a while before joining Methodist about 10 years ago. At that point, I moved to Mansfield and was the Chief Financial Officer for the hospital in Mansfield for a number of years. When we had some changes in our organization, I took over as the Interim President of Mansfield for a while and was primarily responsible for planning the Midlothian campus. I got so involved in it and so interested in it, I said, well, "I'd just like to be the person that goes there as the Administrator." It's been really a lot of fun for a number of years. I moved to Midlothian two years ago this next month, about a year before we opened the hospital, just to get to be part of the community and see it be finished.

Chelsi Frazier: [00:03:27] We were just talking about that. We won't tell people where you live, but we don't live far from each other in Midlothian, so that's cool! Casey, what about you?

Kasey Cheshier: [00:03:36] My name's Kasey Cheshier. I'm over Community Relations and Volunteer Services there at the hospital. I was actually raised in the Duncanville in the Best Southwest region. I guess my time with Methodist goes back a long way. I was born at Methodist Dallas Medical Center. I didn't start with the company until about a year ago, but as they were kind of opening up the new hospital, they onboarded me to help with a lot of their community relations ventures and stuff going on there. I've been a Midlothian resident for about 12 years now, married to my beautiful wife, and we have three kids that were raised in the city/school district as well.

Chelsi Frazier: [00:04:08] You've been involved in Midlothian for a while. It's not like you started the hospital a year ago and you're just now learning about the community. You have a long history.

Kasey Cheshier: [00:04:16] Yeah, quite a bit. Before this, I served as the Executive Director over the United Way here in Ellis County. I've done a lot of community advocacy and volunteerism with a large variety of different projects.

Chelsi Frazier: [00:04:27] Yeah, United Way works with so many organizations. Your wife was my daughter's third grade teacher and we loved Mrs. Cheshier. That was a very fun, too. I feel like I know you guys so well!

Whitney Pryor: [00:04:39] More about the Midlothian campus, can you kind of tell us where it's located and how big it is or what the size is of the campus?

Jary Ganske: [00:04:47] I have to give credit to the groups that we hired to help us find the location. First, you're looking for 60 to 100 acres that you want to be very accessible to the community. It's a lot more involved in choosing than we thought. I think we were thrilled in the end to be able to buy 67 acres. I can tell people we're at 1201 East US 287 and that's probably pretty meaningless to most people. When we point out that we are immediately adjacent to the Midlothian ISD football stadium, then everyone who travels 287 knows exactly where that is. We purchased the acreage there. It's easily accessible off of Midlothian Parkway, 14th Street, or if you're over on Main Street as well. We built some new streets to carry us into the backside of the hospital that were not there previously. It's got great access all the way around. It is 1201 East US 287 if we just want to be technical about the location.

Chelsi Frazier: [00:05:54] Okay, now how many beds? I think that's a common hospital question, right?

Jary Ganske: [00:05:58] Well, we built the hospital for 90 beds, but you can't really open with 90. It's like saying, "we're here, you can't staff it that fast, so we actually opened with 46 beds. We have a need to go beyond there and we're in the process of opening those other beds. When I say we built it for 90 beds, they are there, it's a matter of equipping them, staffing them and those sort of things. I'm sure we'll start increasing that 46 number during 2022. The hospital itself is about 200,000 square feet and that holds the 90 beds. We tried to build all of the things that are overhead, shall we call it, for the hospital - the plant, the kitchen, those sort of things, to be able to allow us to more than double that. We left a space directly behind the hospital, as it's designed to put the second tower. With the original plan, we had envisioned taking it to nearly a couple of hundred beds. Obviously with the 67 acres, we've got more than enough room to continue, whether that needs to be a freestanding center of some sort or an Ambulatory Surgery Center. One of our partners is in the process of building a Dialysis Center within a couple of blocks of the hospital. It's going to become a a medical mecca as we go forward.

Chelsi Frazier: [00:07:32] I think that's a huge benefit that a well-known established hospital or health system brings to a community. Once you're there, then we get many supplemental or services that come in, not necessarily associated with Methodist, but like you said, Dialysis and other quality health care providers really come in soon behind.

Jary Ganske: [00:07:55] Those people are members of our medical community. We have 332, I think it was as of the last count, providers who are part of our medical staff in Midlothian.

Kasey Cheshier: [00:08:08] You're going to see that definitely as you're driving down 14th Street, that the growth in the region is definitely expanding. We've actually recently opened up our Professional Office Building as well, kind of right there next to our hospital. It's right there in Don Floyd, so that has a lot of our outpatient services. We have the MISD Express Care Clinic there and then obviously the Family Health Center, as well. In addition to the hospital itself, your going to have a lot of office spaces and stuff going on there for our specialists.

Jary Ganske: [00:08:34] As we laid out the facility, we tried to put that one office building is between us and 287. We have two other pads for office buildings that are going back towards Main Street. As opposed to going with one giant office building and deciding how long it is going to take to fill up, we decided it would make a lot more sense to have about three pads and build them as we need them.

Chelsi Frazier: [00:08:58] That's smart.

Whitney Pryor: [00:09:00] Speaking of all these different buildings that you guys have planned for the future, what services can you give the people listening in? What kind of range of services will you guys offer?

Jary Ganske: [00:09:14] We really would define ourselves as a full service Acute Care Hospital. When you open, you don't have every last thing that you might wish for, but you see what happens through the first 10,000 visits, the first 20,000 visits and you see what the needs are in the community. Obviously, we do have Cardiology, Emergency Care, Labor & Delivery, Nephrology, Neurology, Orthopedics, Radiology, Surgery, Colorectal care, G.I. Lab, those are all going. We look at things as we go and we say, "we need a little more in depth." For example, we've already determined we need advanced Cardiology Services. We're in the process of equipping and outfitting a Cardiac Cath Lab that will be ready by Spring, just because we think that is needed in that particular community. There will be other things that come like that, for example, Robotic Surgery. There's enough demand for Robotic Surgery, that we're also in the process of adding a robot. Those are not the things you would have opened on day one and said, "we have every last thing," but we pay very close attention to what is needed. We react accordingly. I had one stat that I think you'll find interesting. Can I say it?

Whitney Pryor: [00:10:37] Absolutely.

Jary Ganske: [00:10:38] That is, you said something about the Emergency Department. We knew there was a need there, we just didn't know how vast the need was. Just in the eight months we've been open, we're pretty well able to say that the Midlothian Emergency Medical Services covers like 62 square miles, I believe it is. We were amazed to find that number. Just in the people that they have been able to transport to Methodist Midlothian so far, they're going to save 60,000 miles a year on their ambulances, over 1,000 hours quicker care and over 1,000 hours of saved labor from the teams. We were just kind of like, "that is pretty amazing," even though we knew we were bringing something major to the community, we hadn't guessed that. We have a great relationship with the Fire and EMS people there. They share this with us. We're proud to keep trying to build up on that.

Chelsi Frazier: [00:11:38] I'm sure they were very, very happy to see the hospital go up. I didn't even consider that really. I didn't think about what that would save just in those daily runs.

Jary Ganske: [00:11:48] We didn't either. Quite honestly, you would think that we would be looking at all of those things and that's one we more or less missed in the process. It's very thrilling.

Kasey Cheshier: [00:11:58] As he talks there, you look at the investment that Methodist Health System continues to make here in Midlothian and really the Ellis County corridor, as well. They just obviously just opened up a 175 million dollar facility, but the fact that we're already looking at adding Cardiology, access to Robotics and that kind of stuff, is really just showing how much they have a passion and want to serve the growing health care needs here in the region. It's pretty inspiring to hear some of that.

Whitney Pryor: [00:12:22] Yeah, it's really neat to hear that you guys use that kind of data driven approach. It's so important to know the people, what their needs are whenever they're coming into the hospital and be able to provide that in the future.

Jary Ganske: [00:12:36] We actually had the chairman of the board of the Methodist Health System come down in and spend some time with us about three weeks ago, something like that. It's important that I know everybody and I know how we've been able to take care of everybody that's come in the door. It's maybe even a little bit more important to know about the ones we've been not been able to take full care of when they came in the door, that we found a reason to have to transfer them for a higher level of care or higher level of service. We look at those and where we know there's a need, then we will react to those. Someone asked me, "are you eventually going to have everything?" We're probably not going to do Transplant Surgery in Midlothian, Texas, but I don't think anybody else around us is going to be the transplant surgery, but that doesn't mean that we're not going to look at it and see what is really needed. If it's a once a year sort of a thing, we probably will go where someone knows, does it five times a day and has a great deal of expertise. These are the kind of things we have to look at. You don't just open up and say, "we're going to be every last thing to everybody." We want to be what is really important to this community because we love this community. I've gotten very involved with it. Kasey, I mean, we've got a great group of people that are Midlothian-centric, so we're thrilled!

Chelsi Frazier: [00:14:05] That's great! I think that's a huge benefit of to having someone like Kasey, a Community Relations person out and about. In the fact that y'all both live here, but then you have somebody dedicated to the community, not only can you look at the stats, but then people will just come up and talk to you about, "hey, I went to the hospital last week or here's what I did." Do you get that a lot?

Kasey Cheshier: [00:14:26] Yeah, absolutely. We really rely on those community relationships. Really a lot of it, even our Advisory Board Members, we want to hear the good and we want hear the bad things that way we can make sure that we're responding to those as needed. Those community advocates are huge for us and we're really invested into Midlothian. We want to make sure that we have the right strategic partnerships and the relationships with the community as a whole.

Jary Ganske: [00:14:48] Before we opened and of course opened is a little tough word here, because we were trying to open into a pandemic with a lot of issues, but we named a Community Advisory Board. There was a lot of thought given to that. We have people from the city. We have people from the school. We have a broad group of people, from the religious community and others that advise us, that tell us, "this is what we hear, this is what we know." I'm sad to say that we only were able to bring them together for the first time physically, a month ago in June. Now, I'm even wondering whether we should go back to Zoom for the next meeting simply because of the pandemic. It's been an interesting situation, but they're very involved. They've all come in and gone through the hospital. I wish we could have them there consistently, but we can't quite yet until we know the future of the pandemic.

Chelsi Frazier: [00:15:50] We have a lot of growing families. You mentioned Labor and Delivery, which I think is great. I delivered at Methodist Mansfield. I would have loved to deliver in Midlothian, but the timing just didn't work out. We have a lot of growing families that Whitney and her team talk to all the time. They're moving to Midlothian so they can grow their families or start a family. They have a lot of choices on their health care providers just because we do have several hospitals within this South Dallas-Fort Worth area. Can you kind of just describe the experience a family could expect from Methodist Midlothian, during labor and delivery?

Jary Ganske: [00:16:31] Methodist Midlothian, I believe we opened with the first what is called LDRP Model in North Texas. Now, someone may have followed us with that so far, but what that means is Labor, Delivery, Recovery and Postpartum are all in the same suite. If you come and take a tour of our place ,as you walk in, it is absolutely gorgeous with all the wood paneling. It's large and you can bring the family in. When it's time to deliver, there are some buttons that get pushed. Out of the ceiling, drops the correct lighting and out of the wall opens up the correct support items. You aren't taking a person and running them up and down the hall. "Now, let's take you over here. Now let's move you into the recovery." Everything is done and the baby can stay in the room. Yes. We find it's an excellent model and it's used a lot around the country. I think we were the first in North Texas to do it, but like I said, I think one or two others that might have been opened just since then. We're thrilled with it. We've got nothing but very positive response over it. It'll just take a while. We have some more OBGYN Physicians that'll be coming into this market. We're really excited about a couple of them that we're talking to, but it'll take several months to get those, including one who's coming home, so to speak. That's kind of all I can say about them.

Chelsi Frazier: [00:18:05] I love a good teaser!

Jary Ganske: [00:18:06] We have one coming back, coming home, a native, so all is looking great. Kasey, you talk to these people. I know you've actually done some stories on them. Anything you want to add?

Kasey Cheshier: [00:18:18] Yeah, absolutely. One of the main key things we always hear back, in addition to what he's saying about the Labor Delivery and Postpartum being in the same room, that has really been a highlight, is the Nursing Team. They do such an exceptional job. They are truly invested in the patients, the mom and the baby, and just making sure that that experience is top notch. From you name at the meals, the photography that they do for the mom and the kiddos, we would make sure that that experience is top notch. The crew does an amazing job there.

Jary Ganske: [00:18:45] We have some people that joined us because they actually were in some very high level positions around the Metroplex, but lived in Midlothian. We actually wound up with the Vice President of Women Services from one of the large Children's Hospitals that wanted to come home to be over our LDRP program. it's amazing how many people have this love for Midlothian. We were able to latch onto them since they already lived here. They wanted to be part of this. Even though we were a smaller hospital starting out than than they were used to, they came home to us, so we're thrilled.

Chelsi Frazier: [00:19:25] That's great! I think anybody that's delivered a baby or his spouse has knows that those Nurses are just so key to your experience. Having wonderful, amazing Nurses is huge. That's great that you guys can recruit such high quality staff and Nurses.

Whitney Pryor: [00:19:46] Definitely. My Friend actually had her baby at Mansfield in Mansfield. I was shocked by that experience. Her being able to stay in the room, not having to move rooms, move nurses and move all of those things, it just seemed so much more peaceful and relaxing. Labor and Delivery, in and of itself, is not a very peaceful thing. It's a little chaotic and stressful for everyone.

Jary Ganske: [00:20:13] I don't know that for a fact, but my wife has said that a lot too.

Whitney Pryor: [00:20:17] Yes, just to be able to make that a little bit more calming and soothing for the family and the baby, it really changes the experience. That's a really awesome thing that you guys do. To be able to offer it now in Midlothian is really great. I know several people that have been driving to Mansfield for years for care at Methodist and to have that in their backyard now is great.

Kasey Cheshier: [00:20:44] We want that care close to home. We look at the top three service lines. The hospital Labor and Delivery is definitely one of them, so we want to have that capability for the family to get there quick.

Whitney Pryor: [00:20:58] Definitely.

Chelsi Frazier: [00:20:59] Yeah, sometimes you need it in a hurry.

Kasey Cheshier: [00:21:01] That's right.

Chelsi Frazier: [00:21:02] Methodist Health System is huge. I know we've talked a lot about Midlothian already. Is there anything we haven't touched on in regards to why Midlothian?

Jary Ganske: [00:21:11] I guess the "why", is there was a need here and we kept seeing the need grow from the position I was in at Mansfield. We kept seeing the level of Midlothian's, Midlothionites? I'm not sure what that word should be.

Chelsi Frazier: [00:21:25] That sounds good!

Jary Ganske: [00:21:26] Midlothianonian's or Midlothianite's, but they're looking at Mansfield for medical care. We saw that and we said, "there is a need specifically here." We knew that John Houston Homes and we knew that others were just planning thousands and thousands of new homes in this particular area. It was not going to do anything but get higher demand. I think when we started planning this hospital, we probably didn't even see quite the high level of demand that we're now seeing and that's now on the horizon here. We're absolutely thrilled. We saw what was coming to Mansfield and we knew that there needed to be an option here. We talked about it ad nauseum, as they would say. We decided we did not want a little Mansfield here, but we wanted what people liked about Mansfield here. We stole enough people. I shouldn't say that. We recruited enough people from the Mansfield Hospital to bring that kind of a personality to Midlothian and then brought others in from elsewhere around the Metroplex, so that we can get best practices from a lot of different hospital systems in order to do this. It's not little Mansfield, but it has that personality that people liked at Mansfield. We're thrilled to be able to carry it forward.

Kasey Cheshier: [00:22:52] You know, Midlothian is growing. Did yall know that? From a home builder, I hope yall did. I think the latest number that I heard is roughly a 5% increase growth rate annually. We have a lot of people that are moving to this area because obviously the school districts are amazing. There's a small town charm. We have so many really neat events that we do here in this area. As you start looking in the growth in the whole region, Midlothian and all of Ellis County, the health care needs are going to increase as well. The fact that our health system has been very strategic and intentional about making sure that we're able to service/ We've talked about the Mansfield corridor, but to make sure that obviously we have the investment into Ellis County and we're serving the residents right here in this region is huge. When I look at why Midlothian, I just think about the growth that we're all seeing. We just want to make sure that we're responding to those service lines and the health care needs of the region.

Chelsi Frazier: [00:23:47] I was going to ask you, what would you tell our listeners to consider about their health care when they're choosing where to live? Are there things that they should think about like, "I need to make sure there's a hospital. I need to make sure there's a E.R." It's not something I really thought about. I thought about schools, but is there something that you could kind of strategically think about if I'm going to be here for a long time?

Jary Ganske: [00:24:10] I think the fact that we built the hospital here in Midlothian. We've already talked about how that acts as a magnet for everything that comes around it. The demand for land on 14th Street, on Maine and everywhere else from other Medical Health Care groups and professionals that want to add to it. I think we've created the draw. What you should be looking for is access points. In health care, that's what everybody talks about, is access points. Where can I enter the health care system because not everybody wants to enter the health care system through the Emergency Department. We may have seen 70 people in our emergency department yesterday, but that's not the way that you want to necessarily enter the system. You want access to Primary Care and you want access to Specialists that you can self refer to. I think what we've done, is create the environment for all of these providers and doctors to relocate around us and continue to build those access points with us in the center. That doesn't mean we're the driver, it just means we created it. We're thrilled to be the driver that we are. We've been open, what, eight and a half, nine months. We have national ratings that are called HCAP scores which are between 93% and 99%. I won't say how that compares with other people in our market, but it's great.

Chelsi Frazier: [00:25:37] We could probably go and check that out.

Jary Ganske: [00:25:37] There you go, you go check that out. We're thrilled to be where we are. We're just going to continue to grow and take care of the city of Midlothian. When I say city of Midlothian, not everything is getting built in the city limits, but the people that rely upon the city of Midlothian for their health care.

Whitney Pryor: [00:25:55] We've noticed that you guys are really involved with the community. I live in Waxahachie, but I still see Methodist stuff everywhere. You guys support local churches. Do you guys volunteer? You support different community efforts like schools, for sure. Can you speak into that and why it's so important for you guys to be out there?

Kasey Cheshier: [00:26:21] The Methodist Health system, as a whole, is really dedicated about giving back. At each campus, whether it be Methodist Mansfield, Methodist Charlton or even Methodist Midlothian, we have a community relations person like myself. We're charged to really looking at how we can make the biggest impact by giving back through various partnerships. Whether it be a financial investment, recruiting volunteers, showing up at a back to school bash or whatever that might look like, we're very intentional and really we try to make sure that we're having the biggest presence that we can. We love being involved. We get involved in so many things. It's kind of funny, you mentioned church networks. The school districts are one our key partners. We do a lot with the parks and recs. We really try to encourage health and wellness. Anything that can get people outside, get people kind of moving a little bit and improving that, we're really involved with as well. We just opened up a National Fitness Court with the City of Midlothian, just a few weeks back. That's another project that's right there near 14th Street. That's a big thing for us. We want to do whatever we can to just continue to serve the community not only from, just walking in the emergency room or coming through the hospital as a whole, but what can we do elsewhere as well?

Whitney Pryor: [00:27:30] Yeah, definitely. I think prevention and health are such an important part of the health care network too.

Chelsi Frazier: [00:27:37] Yeah, every time I go to Hawaiian Falls, I love seeing all the little reminders of health and water safety. I just love that yall are like boots on the ground. It's not just like, let me give you money and be on the back of a T-shirt. I see people volunteering.

Kasey Cheshier: [00:27:53] I'll give you an example. We had a UIL Sports Physical Clinic that we actually provided for the school district right at the end of the Summer. It was like right at the end of May. We probably had around 40 health care professionals that volunteered their time. There was probably 10 Physicians that came up there, probably another 20 or 30 Nurses and then we had a lot of our Patient Care Technicians. They weren't getting paid for that. It was something extra they did on a Saturday morning. That really shows you their commitment to Midlothian and this area, because that was just a service that we wanted to provide for the students and the district as a whole. They've got to figure out how to get a few thousand students that come through their sports physicals, so that was a good little deal there. Our team is all on board. It's been a little limited with all the COVID and the safety precautions, but they're really wanting to do some stuff and any time I could rope them in, I try to.

Jary Ganske: [00:28:44] He does a great job of roping in the physicians as well. That was not just Nurses and Techs, we actually got Cardiologists to come out there, give of their time and do the reads. It's important. I think a number of years ago in Mansfield, they discovered one or two issues that could have been very, very serious for a student, so they're in tune to that now. They want to do it for the community.

Chelsi Frazier: [00:29:10] People that really care about the people that live here. That's great, you can't beat that. Thank you both so much for coming.

Jary Ganske: [00:29:19] We certainly enjoyed it. Thank you very, very much.

Chelsi Frazier: [00:29:21] You're welcome. You're welcome back anytime!

Whitney Pryor: [00:29:24] Thank you again listeners, for joining us today on the Welcome Home Podcast. We are so glad that Methodist Midlothian came today to share information about their new hospital. We will leave information about their hospital in the show notes for you to link to, visit their website and find out more about all the different services they offer. If you'd like to get more information about how we can help you in any way, definitely visit our website jhoustonhomes.com or you can email us at info@jhoustonhomes.com. Thank you and have a great day!

Chelsi Frazier and Whitney Pryor: [00:30:01] Welcome Home.