The Down East Seniors Club held their Feb. 8 meeting at the Blind Center of North Carolina in Washington. President Stewart Rumley led the meeting. Chip Ide led the singing of “God Bless America,” and Charles Smith gave the invocation. Dick Paul provided humor.

Charles Smith introduced Penny Coltrain, Vidant’s Administrator of Regional Operations for Beaufort County, as the speaker. Coltrain, along with several of her associates, told about Vidant’s facilities in Beaufort County. Vidant operates 20 clinics in the county employing about 250 people. These clinics provide services in many medical specialties including family medicine, geriatric medicine, cardiology, gastroenterology, orthopedics, pediatrics, rheumatology, urology, cancer and hematology care, behavioral health, women’s care, general surgery and multi-specialty care. Many of the clinics are promoting the “health coach” concept where they coach the patients on how to improve their health and not just work to cure ailments. Tele-medicine is being utilized for patients living in remote locations so they don’t always have to make the trip to the physician’s office. A concentrated effort is being made to recruit physicians who will stay here 10 years or longer so as to reduce physician turnover which is disruptive to patient care. Continuous improvement and community involvement are being promoted. The emergency department at the hospital in Washington sees between 26,000 and 27,000 patients per year. The need has outgrown the facilities, so Vidant will soon start work on a $17 million remodel and expansion of this department. Vidant and East Carolina University physicians are working cooperatively more and more. There was some discussion of the multi-specialty clinic in Belhaven. For more details on this read the excellent article by Mike Voss in the Thursday edition of the Washington Daily News.

Charlie Moore won the 50/50 drawing.