Healthy Community Initiative announced yesterday that Sandy Malecha has been named Interim Executive Director and will lead the
organization into the 2022-23 school year.
Malecha, who has been with HCI since 2014 and has been a Senior Director since 2017, has worked in fund development, personnel and HR management, including the training and supervision of employees and interns, and early childhood initiatives throughout Rice County. She has also co-managed the Growing Up Healthy and Early Childhood Navigators programs.
She holds a master’s degree in Human Resources & Industrial Relations from Carlson School of Management and has a bachelor’s degree in Hispanic Studies & Family Studies from St. Olaf College.
A statement issued by HCI said Malecha will work closely with Administrative Director Amy Lunderby and Senior Director Jodi Lundell to support the continuity of HCI operations. Zach Pruitt, who is departing HCI after 17 years as Executive Director, will help facilitate the transition.
The statement said the transition plan gives the search committee of HCI’s board time to plan and shape the Executive Director role moving forward. The search committee will define the role of Executive Director and the leadership team, keeping the organization’s future as a top priority.
“We are not replacing Zach; we are hiring for HCI’s future,” says Kris Estenson, longtime HCI board member who is chairing the search committee.
Nominations for future Executive Director candidates and other inquiries from individuals interested in learning more about the search process should be directed to executivecommittee@healthycommunityinitiative.org.
Covid-19 made the 2021-22 school year ‘hardest ever’
The 2021-22 school year was the third to be impacted by Covid-19. At the beginning of the year, the Northfield School District made the
decision to do everything possible to avoid going to distance learning or even a hybrid model, and instead make fulltime, in-person learning the top priority. The district met that goal, but it was not easy.
Northfield Superintendent of Schools Dr. Matt Hillmann said, across the country, public-school educators and staff will tell you that the year that just ended was most likely the most difficult of their careers.
“If you had asked me at this time last year how the year had gone, I would have said it was the hardest year ever,” he said. “And then we had this year.”
Hillmann said in the 2020-21 school year, the district reported 263 confirmed cases of Covid-19. In 2021-22, they had 1,415 confirmed cases, 600 in January alone. But Hillmann said, they were able to persevere, because so much more is known about the virus, and how to manage it.
“We have so many more tools today than we did even at the beginning of the school year,” he said.
Among those tools was the testing center the district set up for students, staff and families. He said the testing center performed 1854 tests, with 300 positives.
Another group of tools was the health protocols the district had in place for much of the year. Masking mandates, social distancing, contact tracing and mandatory quarantines were all used to keep the spread of the virus to a bare minimum. Hillmann said there were many people that were grateful the protocols had been put in place, and there were many people who were not at all happy with the protocols. Hillmann said, he was grateful to everyone that registered an opinion.
“I want to thank all the teachers and the staff. I want to thank our parents. And I want to thank our community members. And I sincerely and genuinely thank everyone for their feedback, whether it was supportive or critical. We received critical feedback and positive feedback that helped us understand where the community was at and try to help support them.”
Looking ahead to the 2022-23 school year, Hillmann said he is optimistic that the pandemic will not have the same impact it has had over the last three years. He said the last week of the school year felt the “most regular” it had in quite some time, and he is hopeful that trend will continue.
New Electronic Health Record program at NH+C almost ready
Northfield Hospital +Clinics has announced a new Electronic Health Record system will be coming online in the next few weeks. 
An Electronic Health Record, or an EHR, is an electronic version of a patient’s medical history that can be updated in real time and can be accessed quickly and easily in different health care settings. An EHR goes beyond simply digitizing patient information so that a particular hospital can track a patient’s history at that hospital. Instead, an EHR is built to be a secure way to allow health information to move with a patient, from state to state, or from hospital to hospital.
EHR systems have become increasingly common in healthcare settings across the country since the early 2000s. According to HealthIT.gov, as of 2017, 80% of office-based physicians had adopted a certified EHR system.
In 2007, Minnesota became the first state in the nation to mandate EHR systems for all healthcare providers by 2015. This mandate was eliminated in 2019, but Minnesota still has higher EHR adoption rates than physicians nationally.
For the past year and half, Northfield Hospital + Clinics has been working on implementing an EHR system. NH+C President and CEO Steve Underdahl said that EHR systems are important for medical centers and are key to how medicine is practiced today, but they are also expensive.
“What we spend on EHR’s is what we used to spend on buildings,” he said.
Though ultimately Underdahl believes the new Electronic Health Records system will improve the patient experience in Northfield, bringing new systems online always presents some temporary challenges.
“What I would say to our patients and our public is that it’s going to take us a little time to get up to sped. Anytime you get a new piece of tech, it goes a little slower at first. So, you might find that the appointment that you have that used to take ten minutes will now take thirteen minutes.”
Currently Northfield Hospital + Clinics patients can access their medical information and make appointments using the MyHealth website or app. Underdahl also said the MyHealth user experience will also be improved by the new EHR system.
The new Northfield Hospital + Clinics Electronic Health Records system will come online at the end of June or early July. For more information visit northfieldhospital.org.
Rich Larson is the KYMN News Director. Contact him at rich@kymnradio.net
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