Dear Ellen and all,

Greetings:  I am back after several years absence from LACTNET. However  I've been a frequent user of the archives.  Thanks so much for all the information.   A few of you corresponded with my husband when we were in Singapore in 1998 about genetically modified soy products.

Currently I work at a brand new hospital in Meridian Idaho as one of 2 LC's.  We just opened Nov 12 and have had alittle over 60 births so far.  I don't have any encourging news about staffing but would like to be included in emails about how to go about improving LC staffing.

1 How many deliveries do you do a year and how
many FTE LCs do you have?  
We expect to do 2000 births per year, our parent hospital downtown Boise has 5400 yearly.  Flora and I split 1.4 FTE so we cover 7 days a week,  8-4:30pm.

2 What other services do you offer : ie.outpatient, followup calls , support groups etc.?  
We provided outpatient follow up, followup calls and weekly 2 hour support group.

 3 Do you charge for your services and do you have a hard time getting them reimbursed through insurance? 

We currently do not charge for services. 

4 Do you cover weekends and holidays?  
We work every other wekend and rotate holidays

5 What kind of support staff do you have on the floor? 
The nurses are suppossed to help all breastfeeding mothers and let us know if they run into problems.  We do a brief visit with each mother, answering ??? , assisting and evaluating latch, etc   We teach a 12 hour Lactation Educator Course every other month for all nurses/aides including Pedi nurses.  We also see Pedi pts and med/surg moms that are breasfeeding.  

6 What happens when you are ill or take a day off?

So far Flora and I have been covering ourselves.  However we both want to attend ILCA regional conference in March.  We are hoping to get support staff (a nurse that is passionate about breatfeeding with good latch on skills) to answer our Warmline, make rounds, see outpt's, do followup calls,support group etc. 

It is great to be back online with all you.
Warmly,
Betsy Ayers BSN, IBCLC
St Luke's Meridian Medical Center
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