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Everson appointed to VDMC board

New trustee will fill a vacancy for unexpired term

David Everson was appointed to the Van Diest Medical Center Board of Trustees Tuesday night in an electronic meeting of the board.

Everson will fill the vacancy left when Alyssa Kenville resigned from the board effective May 1. Kenville was appointed to the board in January to fill the unexpired term of the late Henry Witt.

Kirk McCollough, chairman of the nominating committee, said the committee interviewed two candidates last week.

“Both were very interested in the position and were eager to serve on the board of trustees,” McCollough said. “David will bring some youth to the board and some experience in the medical community.”

Everson is the chief financial officer for Life & Health Care in Webster City. He’s a graduate of the University of Northern Iowa with an BA in business Administration Management.

Board Chairman Roberta Knutson gave Everson the oath of office at the conclusion of the meeting.

During the meeting VDMC Chief Executive Officer Lisa Ridge gave an update on COVID-19. She reminded the board that the positive tests are not always equal to the number of positive cases, because a a person can test positive more than once. She showed the trustees maps from the coronavirus.iowa.gov website which display the number of tests, the number of positive cases, the number of people who have recovered and the number of deaths throughout Iowa.

“As you can see, both positive, recovered and death trends are all trending down slightly,” she said.

Three hundred seventy-nine patients are hospitalized across Iowa with 115 in intensive care units. Twenty-eight had been admitted in the past 24 hours across the state, she said, down by 18 percent from yesterday.

Ridge said for the past 69 days, the hospital’s incident command has been open, allowing 13 of VDMC’s leaders to work together to prepare for the hospital’s response to COVID-19.

“Tomorrow will be our last incident command meeting,” she said. “At that point we’re going to dissolve incident command and move into our recovery team. We’ll be working on recovery and sustainability,” she said.

The coronavirus pandemic affected several operations at VDMC and with Gov. Reynolds extension of the emergency declaration through June 25, many will stay in effect, according to Ridge.

Also during the meeting, the board approved two capital requests – concrete replacement and software upgrade related to the HVAC system – for a total cost of $94,886.

Two purchases by the hospital foundation were also approved. The foundation will provide $1,500 for landscaping materials and an employee recognition.

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