Mount Grant General Hospital

Mount Grant General Hospital is located in Hawthorne, Nevada, 138 miles southeast of Reno, the nearest urban center.  A district hospital owned by Mineral County, the hospital serves a resident population of approximately 4500 citizens.  Situated on the major southern route to Las Vegas, the hospital also serves those traveling through the state. The hospital has 11 licensed acute beds and 24 long term beds.  Administrator Richard Munger has served in that position for the past 25 years, and is one of the founding members of the Nevada Hospital Association’s Rural Council and in 1988, a founding member of Nevada Rural Hospital Partners, a consortium of 15 of Nevada’s small, rural and frontier hospitals in 1988, formed following the award of a $1.2 million grant from The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation.  

Mt. Grant General Hospital was one of the grantees for the HRSA Hospital Information Systems Integration Program, the purpose of which was the integration of existing (legacy) software systems in participating hospitals, linking laboratory and radiology departments directly to the billing office to create efficiencies and improve reimbursement, and creation of centralized data storage and other applications.  Mt. Grant served as the demonstration site for creation of digital records as part of the grant.  NRHP’s DISRN project (Diagnostic Imaging Solution for Rural Nevada) was funded with a CMP/OAT grant, and again, Mt. Grant General Hospital participated in the enhancement and expansion of telehealth capability.  DISRN enabled integration of patient information with diagnostic digital images, electronic transmission of the images over a secure, redundant WAN to a central image archive, and a centralized information system for image retrieval and management of hospital radiology departments.

In 2005 Mt. Grant General Hospital was designated as one of the nation’s top 35 Critical Access Hospitals in LarsonAllen’s Critical Access Hospital Gold Standard Performance Summary. In a letter addressed to Mr. Munger, David Schuh, CPA and Principal of LarsonAllen Health Care said, “This recognition is based on your exemplary financial performance and strength, created by the development and execution of strategies that enhanced your overall economic vitality through attention to physician relations, cost management and market share for a mix of medical and surgical services in the community.”  Mr. Schuh went on to congratulate Mr. Munger, his Board of Directors and physicians for “your impressive leadership in guiding Mt. Grant General Hospital into expanded opportunities for community service.”