“We are the custodians of our community health,” said Dwayne Butler, chief executive officer for Betty Jean Kerr People’s Health Centers.
“And what that means is we cannot only be confined to the walls of this organization. Our health care has to find itself in our community.”
Through its partnership in the Prostate Cancer Awareness Coalition, Butler said, People’s hopes to screen 1,000 men this year with PSA testing.
A kickoff for the Coalition’s free prostate cancer screening effort will be held at 1 p.m. Friday, Feb. 6 at the People’s location at 5701 Delmar.
Through the coalition, People’s will distribute coupons for free protein-specific antigen blood tests, known as PSA testing, through member organizations such as 100 Black Men of St. Louis, Better Family Life, Inc., Urban League Youth Professionals, Gateway Classic Foundation and St. Louis Black Leadership Roundtable.
Prostate cancer is the leading cause of death for African-American men, who also have the highest incidence of the disease in the world. When caught early, the five-year survival rate is nearly 100 percent. Survival is the reason men like Butler and coalition partners are waging a man-to-man fight against prostate cancer in the community.
Medical experts recommend PSA screenings and rectal exams annually for men after age 50 and earlier for African-American men and men with a family history of prostate cancer.
It is a major new community effort for People’s and for Butler, who has been CEO for Betty Jean Kerr People’s Health Centers for less than a year. His mother is the namesake for the 37-year-old federally qualified health center.
Butler said he is focusing on better customer service at all three People’s locations and community collaboration for better access to health care.
“The learning has been intense, but it’s been good,” Butler said.
“The community has been warm and very receptive.”
He regularly walks the floors, getting a feel for what’s going on and talking with patients. Butler admits he sometimes gets an earful, but “we continue to try and calibrate that.”
‘Into the future’
Butler said the most significant thing he has done at People’s thus far will result in the efficiency of Health Information Technology.
“We have just signed a contract and begun the implementation of an electronic health record system,” he said. The first component will be a practice management system, scheduled to go electronic early next month.
“Information is going to flow quickly, so that the moment you are speaking to a doctor or a nurse about your particular situation, they are able to pull that information up immediately,” he said.
Electronic health records are also a key component of the president’s health care plan. Butler said it will cost nearly a million dollars for the conversion and the organization has state and federal dollars to support implementation.
“Not only does it really help for the efficient handling of patients and better medicine, it also makes it cheaper,” he said.
“Because, in a perfect world, once everyone is up and running, if you visit an emergency room, if you visit a hospital, we will be able to see what happened to you there so that we don’t have redundant testing.”
People’s also operates People’s University, a computer lab for employees to sharpen skills and learn new programs.
Butler said, “I think having that new feel, peppered with some of the experience of the others, has put us in a very good position to lead this organization into the future.”
In other improvements, People’s has added a new patient parking area at the Delmar site and made the pediatric department more kid-friendly.
“We talk about the provision of services with dignity, so we really feel that our providing good health care begins with the way we answer phones and begins with the way the facility looks,” Butler said.
Sites are better-staffed and are being updated, he said.
“Right now we are in the middle of an almost half-million dollar renovation to our North site on West Florissant. We have a couple of new obstetricians that we are very excited about that are delivering babies for us now,” he said.
“We have a new family doctor at our West site now, and we are also in the middle of a renovation at our West site as well. So we have put significant dollars into our capital spending.”
Less than a year back in St. Louis and this high-profile bachelor in the health care community scooped up a high-profile bachelorette in St. Louis media. Dwayne Butler and KMOV Channel 4 news anchor Vickie Newton got married last month and celebrated their honeymoon at the inauguration of President Barack Obama.
