News Releases and Information
Lawn Party to thank MDNA donors....8/16/2011
In spite of the rain---the guests were warmly welcomed and greatly appreciated, the gardens were lovely, the tent was cozy, the food was delicious, the music was merry, the flowers were beautiful, and the offices were inviting. In this setting, MDNA's Lawn Party celebrated and honored MDNA donors for their generosity and support over the years.
MDNA president, Wanda Fernald, commented, "We were fortunate to have a wonderful mix of people ----both new and old (donors). We were able to meet some of our new donors....It was nice to see clients of ours as well---home health clients, loan closet recipients and office clients (for Blood Pressures). Those that came represented all facets of our service."
MDNA sends many, many thanks to all its donors, for supporting MDNA's in-home nursing care, Loan Closet of durable medical equipment, and community health programs and clinics.
From "The Islander", 7/21/11
Director’s job cut
Nurses launch $2.4M drive
By Dick Broom
dbroom@mdislander.com
MOUNT DESERT — The Mount Desert Nursing Association (MDNA) has launched a $2.4 million endowment campaign to ensure that it can continue to provide home healthcare and other services for years to come.
In the meantime, to reduce costs, the board of directors has eliminated the position of Executive Nurse Director, effective Sept. 30. Anne Napier, a registered nurse, has held the 28-hour-a-week job since it was created on a three-year trial basis in 2008.
The MDNA, founded in 1949, provides in-home nursing care for residents of Mount Desert who have chronic medical conditions or are recovering from an illness or injury. Nurses also visit new mothers and babies to help them get off to a healthy start.
Home visits, which often last an hour or more, cost the MDNA an average of $126. Patients are charged according to their ability to pay, up to $75 a visit. Many patients pay little or nothing, so the organization depends heavily on donations.
Wanda Fernald, president of the MDNA’s board of directors, said the association’s in-home nursing services are not in jeopardy, but the organization needs a more reliable source of income to continue some of its community education and outreach programs. She said the recession and its effect on investments have taken a toll.
“We had a stronger endowment until four or five years ago, when everything started plummeting,” Ms. Fernald said. “It’s a challenge every year to meet our budget.”
Ms. Fernald said that, after Sept. 30, the essential parts of Ms. Napier’s job would be handled by the MDNA’s other part-time employees. There are two registered nurses who spend much of their 32 hours a week seeing patients in the patients’ homes. An office manager works 35 hours a week.
Ms. Napier has been seeing patients who are able to go to the MDNA’s office in Northeast Harbor for such things as blood pressure checks, dressing changes and diabetic foot care. She also has been responsible for grant writing, publicity, website maintenance, community wellness programs and coordination with other health-related organizations on Mount Desert Island, as well as administrative and organizational responsibilities.
Ms. Napier said a generous donation funded her position the first year, and the board found the money for the next two years. “Now it looks like it’s not financially feasible anymore, even though they have told me repeatedly how much they appreciate what I have done and what a difference it has made,” she said.
Ms. Fernald said Ms. Napier has been a great asset. “She has helped the board work in a direction that has a clear goal,” Ms. Fernald said. “I think getting us to that point would have been a lot more arduous without the Executive Nurse Director. Anne also has helped me tremendously to keep up with what needs to be done, with needs that have been identified in the community that we can meet.”
Ms. Fernald said the board would take some time to look at restructuring the position so that it requires fewer hours a week and “doesn’t stretch the person in so many different directions.”
The MDNA is unusual among home health agencies in that it doesn’t accept Medicare, Medicaid or private insurance. "That’s so we can do things for patients that we wouldn’t be able to do otherwise,” Ms. Napier said. “Medicare, Medicaid and insurance companies say they only cover acute care, and patients have to be homebound. We don’t want them to be homebound.”
Ms. Fernald said the MDNA often fills the gap between the care that Medicare covers and a patient’s ability to be completely independent. "We see people who really need our services, but they’re not at a level of needing acute care that Medicare will continue paying for,” she said. “They run a higher risk of ending up in the hospital again or in a nursing home if they don’t have some support.”
Many of the MDNA’s patients are elderly, but the organization serves people of all ages. Last year, its nurses made 1,372 home visits. They typically provide in-home care for 35-40 different patients at a time, and sometimes as many as 50 in the summer.
Patients and their families may borrow medical equipment, such as walkers, from the MDNA’s “loan closet.” This service saved Mount Desert residents an estimated $56,000 in the past year.
Ms. Fernald said the MDNA hopes to reach its $2.4 million endowment goal within three years. The organization has been quietly soliciting donations and will formally launch the public phase of the campaign with a lawn party at its office at 12 Summit Road in Northeast Harbor on Aug. 16
February 2011
Mount Desert Elementary School students interview MDNA nurses
Transitions in the MDNA appearance!
Due to the generosity of a number of donors, the MDNA building now has a new look, both summer and winter. Our summer Cottage-garden look was provided by Ruth Fraley, with the able design and planting done by Robert Harrington. With the removal of the overgrown lilacs, we now have much more light inside.
MDI Marathon--October 17, 2010
Flu Clinic update- 10/25/10
| Written by Dick Broom |
| Thursday, September 23, 2010 at 2:36 pm |
MOUNT DESERT — The Mount Desert Nursing Association is one of only two recipients of this year’s Public Health Program of Excellence Award of the Maine Public Health Association (MPHA). The award will be presented at the MPHA’s annual meeting Oct. 5 in Augusta. The Mount Desert Nursing Association (MDNA) provides home health care services to year-round and summer residents of Mount Desert, offers free community health education programs and clinics, and has an island-wide Loan Closet. The MDNA coordinates with dozens of area health care providers, human service agencies and community organizations. Tina Pettingill, executive director of the MPHA, said the awards committee was particularly impressed by the scope of the MDNA’s collaborations. “They have found some really creative ways to meet the demands in their area,” she said. The other recipient of the MPHA’s 2010 Program of Excellence Award is the Newborn Hearing Screening Program of the Maine Department of Health and Human Services.
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The Mount Desert Nursing Association has just been notified they have been selected by the Maine Public Health Association for its Annual "Public Health Program of Excellence" Award. Chosen from state-wide nominees, MDNA received information that it had been selected with the following statement:
"On behalf of the Maine Public Health Association Board of Directors and
Awards and Nominating Committee, I am thrilled to let you know that the Mount Desert Nursing Association's Home Health and Community Health Nursing Services have been selected to receive the Public Health Program of Excellence award! We had a very competitive field this year but you and one other applicant (the Maine Newborn Screening Program) stood out amongst the rest. The committee was especially impressed by the amount of collaboration that is involved in your program and how many
donations you receive that basically support your program-- congratulations
on the incredible work you do in Mount Desert, Mount Desert Island, and Hancock County!
You will be honored with your award at our annual meeting on October 5th at
the Augusta Civic Center. We welcome many people from your organization
or area at the meeting.... I look forward to meeting you on October 5th and again, my congratulations!!
Tina", (Maine Public Health Association)
May 29, 2010
Maybaskets for MDNA patients
With the assistance of Rebecca Heniser and Paula Moody, teachers at Mount Desert Elementary School, second and third grade students designed and made over 50 May baskets for patients being visited by the nurses from the Mount Desert Nursing Association.
The students were careful to fill the baskets with sugar-free candy so all patients could enjoy the contents. They delivered the brightly colored baskets to the MDNA offices where the nurses took them to patients on their next visits.
Our patients were so pleased to be remembered, and told the nurses about their memories of delivering Maybaskets themselves when they were children--making baskets of folded paper, filling them with sweets and wildflowers, hanging them on a doorknob, then ringing the doorbell and running away, leaving the recipient to guess who had left the Maybasket. Pictured with the students in the last picture is Wanda Fernald, MDNA school nurse, who is also President of the MDNA Board of Directors.
April 20, 2010
By Nan Lincoln
(Photo by: Nan Lincoln) Nurse Emma Lansing, right, checks patient Shirley McGarr's heartbeat, one of the many functions the Mount Desert Nursing Association offer its patients.
Mount Desert — The town of Northeast Harbor has many treasures. There are the scenic ones that are revealed the moment one crests the notch on Route 198, between Sargent and Norumbega mountains, and sees the harbor and the Western Way stretched out below. The town also has a rich history that encompasses hard-working farming and fishing families as well as some of the wealthiest and most powerful people in the world.
It has a charming Main Street that has remained essentially unchanged for 100 years and a deep pocket of a harbor where yachts from all over the world find shelter, and fishing boats flock to when a nor'easter is brewing.
But one of its biggest and perhaps least known treasures is based in a cozy little white house on the corner of Summit Road and Maple Lane. The Mount Desert Nursing Association operates out of this little building, and like a warm wood stove on a cold day, it radiates its good works throughout the entire community. All the residents of the extended town likely benefit in one way or another from this radiated "warmth," but many probably do not know exactly where that warmth is coming from.
Shirley McGarr knows, though. And every Friday she is reminded how important the Nursing Association is in her life.
Take this Friday, for instance. It's a chilly gray morning, and MDNA staff nurse Emma Lansing is making her rounds. One of her regular stops is the McGarr home on Cove End Road.
It's a friendly-looking bungalow style home with a neatly kept yard, and it is one of the last homes on this little lane owned by a year-round resident — something that Shirley regrets. The lack of neighbors is just one reason why the Nursing Service is so important to her.
At age 84, Shirley is a perky, pretty lady with a lot of interests and energy. But she also has some medical conditions, such as diabetes, that need consistent monitoring, and she has some limitations as well. She no longer drives and while she enjoys walking with her little poodle, Heidi, down to Gilpatrick Cove and other favorite spots in the immediate neighborhood, a trip into town is too much for her.
What Shirley seems to love most of all is living in and managing the home she and her husband shared most of their adult life and where she raised her two boys. One can immediately see why she is reluctant to leave this home and move into an assisted living facility. It is filled with photographs, art and the cherished items she has gathered over a lifetime.
"This wouldn't be possible for me without these wonderful people," Shirley says, as Emma Lansing wraps a pliable cuff around her arm to take her blood pressure. "They look out for me and they have also become my friends."
In addition to the services Lansing and the other five full and part time staff nurses provide, such as managing her medications and pill box, checking her refrigerator, checking her feet for any signs of trouble (especially important with a diabetic) — they have also taught Shirley how to do some things for herself, including checking her blood sugar.
"Oh, I don't think I really want to do it myself today," Shirley tells Lansing, perhaps nervous to have a visitor watching. And yet with just a little help preparing her kit, she does do it, crying "yippee!" when on the second try she produces the desired drop of blood.
Next she steps on a scale, "this will make a grown woman cry," she quips, but is pleased to learn she has lost two pounds since last week. Lansing checks the packet of medical information that is attached to Shirley's refrigerator, which an ambulance crew could refer to in case of an emergency call to her home. Shirley keeps a similar packet in her purse.
The MDNA has also connected Shirley, and many of the other 50 or so patients they regularly see, with the Meals on Wheels program that delivers lunch to her door every weekday. Island Connection's volunteer drivers get her to her doctor's appointments and she also has a Lifeline — Shirley displays the emergency bracelet she wears that she can activate and alert the local dispatchers if she has fallen or has some other medical emergency.
One gets the impression that Shirley's needs are well taken of by the nursing service and related agencies, and that not only do they make it possible for her to live at home, they make her feel safe there as well.
While the majority of the MDNA clients are senior citizens like Shirley — Hancock County has the fastest aging population in the state — the staff also provides vital services to people in every stage of the life cycle, making home visits to new parents; checking up on people who have just had an operation or are recovering from an illness; organizing flu shot, prostate exam, breast exam and other medical clinics; and managing a "loan closet" full of walkers, crutches, canes and other equipment people can borrow as needed rather than spending hundreds of dollars on new ones. They are also in contact with the local police department, making sure that in cases of power outages or real disasters, someone is checking on known housebound residents. They are also there to ease the transition at the end of life, making it possible for many people to die, as they wish, in their own homes and in their own beds.
In fact, in the past 61 years, the Mount Desert Island Nursing Association, a private organization that is funded primarily through donations, has made more than 86,000 home visits, and in more recent years has been making around 2,000 visits a year to the residents of Mount Desert.
While they do not accept insurance — and therefore relieve themselves of the reams of paperwork it involves — no one is turned away because they cannot pay.
"Because we don't have to deal with a third party payer, such as Medicare, we have more time to talk with our patients and their loved ones," said Lansing. "We have time to provide emotional support and more time for preventative care. We also are able to keep up with all the new information that is out there."
Lansing said she has attended more in-service learning events in her past five years at MDNA than in practically her entire career as a nurse.
Overseeing all of this learning, teaching and nursing activity is MDNA Director Dr. Anne Napier, a licensed registered nurse with a doctorate in psychology as well.
Talking with her, Napier is clearly proud of her organization, which has become a model for other services like it throughout the state and the country. She said she would like to see a service like MDNA in every small town on Mount Desert Island, and Maine too, for that matter.
"We save lives here," she said. "We keep people healthy and out of the hospital, or if we spot a problem, such as an infected toe on a patient with diabetes, we get them to a hospital or their doctor to get it treated before that toe or even a foot is lost." She relates another recent case in which a visiting nurse determined that her patient was having a stroke and got him to the hospital in time, and just this afternoon, she says, they discovered after a blood sample was analyzed that a patient's potassium levels were so high, he was at risk for cardiac problems, perhaps even a heart attack and they took steps to prevent that by immediately notifying the patient's physician.
While she can and does from time to time make house calls herself, mostly she works out of the office - a corner of a large comfy looking living room where residents are welcome to drop in. Sometimes children from the nearby grammar school are sent over if they are not feeling well, and the school nurse is away.
Napier is the one who keeps careful track of every patient's progress or conversely their decline and, when patient problems or concerns are identified in patient conferences with her staff, facilitates staff notification of doctors and referrals to other resources. As a cane user herself, she also give clinics on the proper use of a cane, something that is not so straightforward as one might think.
And sometime it is not a cane, or a pill or a blood workup that is needed. Sometimes it is just someone to talk to about fears and concerns at the end of life, the start of a new family or following a traumatic experience.
"In the aging process in particular there are a lot of losses," said Napier. "If we can teach people to value themselves in the world, whatever stage they are in, well, that is a good thing."
For more information about or to donate to the Mount Desert Nursing Association, call 276-5184, write P.O. Box 397, Northeast Harbor, ME 04662 or go to mountdesertnursing.org.
December 2008
"Good-bye and Hello"
Dianne McMullan
GOOD-BYE—After 11 years at Mount Desert Nursing Association, first as a part-time Registered Nurse/Community Health Nurse providing visits and nursing care to residents of Mount Desert, and later assuming the position of full-time Community Health Nurse and Nurse Director of the Association, the Board of Directors of the Nursing Association has regretfully accepted the resignation and retirement of Dianne McMullan. Dianne’s expert nursing care and the caring she offered her patients, her many contributions to the Mount Desert Nursing Association, and her generous giving of herself and her time to many health-oriented and non-profit organizations on Mount Desert Island, will be long remembered.
A few of Dianne's comments as she said good-bye: "In the words of Lillian Wald, founder of the Visiting Nurse Service (in the United States) 'Nursing is love in action, and there is no finer manifestation of it than the care of the aged and disabled in their own homes.' Thank you to the Board of Directors and the Town of Mt. Desert for the honor of serving as your " 'town nurse'."
Theo Hinckley
HELLO—The Mount Desert Nursing Association has added two new registered nurses to its staff. Theo Hinckley brings her fine skills and varied experiences as a registered nurse to the Association, and joins Emma Lansing, who has been an excellent regististered nurse with the Association for over four years. Both are experienced community health nurses and both will be responsible for providing direct care in home visits. Both Emma and Theo work full-time, which allows the Association to provide more hours of patient care, and to accept additional patient referrals.
Another new face at the Mount Desert Nursing Association is Anne Napier, also a registered nurse, who has accepted the newly created position of Executive Nurse Director. Anne is responsible for administration of services, over-sight of care, fund-raising and community outreach. Anne, Theo and Emma join Patti Billings, the Adminstrative Assistant, whose pleasant voice you hear when you call the office, and several other talented RNs, who fill in when needed, to provide care to Mount Desert residents.
Anne Napier
Although the Visiting Nurse model has been in existence for over a hundred years, and community health nursing has evolved and grown in numbers, Mount Desert Nursing Association is unique in being autonomous and non-profit, with a focus on patients and the community, rather than being driven primarily by the bottom line. The guiding philosophy of the Nursing Association is that caring for the patient, their families, and the community is their top priority. Fees are on a sliding scale, and no patient is denied services based on financial constraints. The Town of Mont Desert contributes some funding annually to the Nursing Association, but almost the entire financial support for the work of the Association comes from the thoughtfulness, caring and generosity of Mt. Desert residents and businesses whose donations and contributions support the visits by registered nurses to their friends, neighbors and family members.
In addition to providing nursing services for all ages; from visits to newborns and new moms through the entire age spectrum to caring for, and helping maintain the independence of our more elderly and vulnerable seniors, the Mount Desert Nursing Association has a Loan Closet of durable medical equipment, i.e. canes, crutches, commodes, bath seats, raised toilet seats, to name a few items. These are available for loan to persons needing such equipment.
For more information about Nursing Association services available to residents of Mount Desert, or to make a self referral or referral of a family member or friend, please call 207-276-5184.
Contributions in honor of Dianne McMullan may be sent in care of: Mount Desert Nursing Association, P.O. Box 397, Mount Desert, ME 04662. The Mount Desert Nursing Association is a non-profit corporation, and donations and contributions are tax-deductible.