Nurse Aide - Medical/Surgical

Monument Health Heart and Vascular Institute welcomes three new physicians, continuing decades of growth in heart care close to home. August 28, 2026 RAPID CITY, S.D. - Monument Health's Heart and Vascular Institute (HVI) announced the addition of three new physicians to its team: Shazia Aziz, M.D., Nebojsa Markovic, M.D. and Rhythm Vasudeva, M.D. The additions mark the latest step in HVI's long-running investment in bringing highly skilled cardiovascular care to western South Dakota and eastern Wyoming. This allows patients to have access to high-quality advanced heart and vascular treatment, close to home. Today, HVI is home to the largest group of cardiovascular specialists in western South Dakota, spanning cardiology, vascular medicine, cardiothoracic surgery, vascular and endovascular surgery, advanced cardiac imaging, advanced heart failure, interventional cardiology and electrophysiology. That range allows the team to manage nearly any cardiovascular condition under one roof, from routine diagnostics to complex structural heart procedures. The three new physicians add further depth to that team. Dr. Aziz is a fellowship-trained cardiologist who trained at Christiana Care Sidney Kimmel Medical College at Thomas Jefferson University. Dr. Markovic is a fellowship-trained electrophysiologist who trained at Deborah Heart and Lung Center and Mount Sinai Morningside Hospital in New York. Dr. Vasudeva is a fellowship-trained cardiologist who served as chief fellow at the University of Kansas Medical Center. HVI is nationally recognized for the quality of its heart and vascular care, with honors from organizations including the American Heart Association and the American College of Cardiology, along with recognition from U.S. News & World Report for Rapid City Hospital's performance in heart care. About Monument Health Headquartered in Rapid City, S.D., Monument Health is a community-based health care system with a mission to make a difference, every day. The system offers care in 31 medical specialties and serves 14 communities across western South Dakota and in eastern Wyoming. With over 5,000 physicians and caregivers, Monument Health is composed of 5 hospitals and 38 medical clinics and specialty centers. Monument Health is a member of the Mayo Clinic Care Network.

Monument Health drives 19% increase in daily Cardiology appointments in first 4 months. Without adding staff or clinic hours, in the first four months since go-live, Monument Health reached... In a nutshell. Based in Rapid City, South Dakota, Monument Health is a trusted health system serving patients across a largely rural geographic area, where access to specialty care is limited. When Monument launched Care Connect, their initiative to modernize patient access across the system, they partnered with Hummingbird Healthcare to help turn their vision into operational reality. The access transformation results in Cardiology proved what's possible and built the foundation for what's to come. In the first four months, without adding providers or clinic hours, completed daily visits grew by 19%, online scheduling grew from 0% to 7.3%, and provider utilization is approaching 100% across MDs and APPs. This added capacity was already available in Monument's Epic environment and their existing team of staff and providers. The unlock was having an accountable partner in technology transformation, process redesign, and operational standards to turn their latent capacity into care. The challenge. Monument's scheduling infrastructure had grown organically over the years, but it wasn't keeping pace with patient expectations or organizational capabilities. Online scheduling was available for primary care and select radiology areas, but not broadly activated. When appointment slots opened, or follow-ups were needed, staff handled everything by phone and mail. There were manual touchpoints at every step. Referrals moved through processes that consumed staff time without adding clinical value. Lacking real-time visibility into schedule performance, there was no clear picture of where the friction lived or how to fix it. The building blocks for modernizing access were already there in Monument's team and Epic system. The opportunity was to develop a foundation for consistent access standards across the system and activate Epic's full capabilities, reducing administrative burden through automation. The solution. Rather than diving in with quick fixes in a single department, Hummingbird's deliberate approach began with building the enterprise access foundation, making every department that follows easier to activate and progress harder to erode. The foundation was built through establishing scheduling standards, template architecture, and governance infrastructure at the enterprise level. From there, operational work at the specialty level began. Hummingbird and Monument chose Cardiology as the first department to activate because it's one of the most complex scheduling environments in any health system. If the model worked there, it would work anywhere. The team: * Optimized and rebuilt provider scheduling templates. * Activated online scheduling for patients. * Redesigned referral order workflows to reduce manual touchpoints and route the right patient to the right provider. * Deployed waitlist automation to prevent unused capacity from slipping away. Additionally, Hummingbird's Mission Control, an embedded operating model centered on access adherence, gave Monument real-time visibility into online scheduling rates, no-show and late cancel trends, referral turnaround times, provider and schedule utilization, and visit volume. Even more importantly, Mission Control provides proposed interventions to prevent backslide, ensuring results compound after go-live instead of drifting back to baseline. Throughout, Hummingbird worked alongside Monument's operational leaders to understand their challenges firsthand, developing the workflows, processes, and tools to help their teams work more efficiently and accurately. Hummingbird also partnered closely with Monument's IT team to optimize and refine their Epic environment for both current needs and what comes next. The results. Four months in, Cardiology is running well above every target, and results continue to build each month. Daily completed visits have climbed from 108.8 to 129.8, a 19% increase driven by better template utilization, smarter provider-to-patient matching, and fewer no-shows. The same providers and the same staff are now working within a system built to deploy their capacity effectively. Online scheduling grew from 0% to 7.3%, as patients began self-scheduling, cancelling, and rescheduling without a phone call. This saves staff time on every interaction, reduces call abandonment rates, and makes access easier for patients who can't call during business hours. The no-show rate fell 30%, from 8.0% to 5.6%. And in May, Cardiology hit the 30% referral ticket rate project benchmark for the first time resulting in one in three referrals now being eligible for online scheduling. Behind the scenes, automation recovered 462 cumulative hours of administrative work across ticket notifications, follow-up order requests, triage outreach, and referral clearance. That's time back to staff for higher value tasks. What's next. The enterprise access infrastructure built during the Cardiology engagement provides the foundation for Monument's Care Connect initiative to scale. Every department that follows is faster to activate and more consistent from day one. Endocrinology is already live, and Primary Care is in motion. From there, the roadmap extends across Monument's remaining medical and surgical specialties, along with imaging workflows, ultimately touching every part of how patients access care across the system. When that work is complete, Monument will have a unified patient access experience built on shared standards and sustained by real-time data. The Care Connect program is not a one-time intervention that drifts back to baseline. It's change that sticks for good.

Monument Health recognized for advancing rural stroke care. August 25, 2026 The American Heart Association's Get With The Guidelines(R)- Stroke Rural Recognition Silver award recognizes efforts to address the unique health needs of rural communities RAPID CITY, SD (Aug. 25, 2026) - People who live in rural communities live an average of three years fewer than urban counterparts and have a 40% higher likelihood of developing heart disease and face a 30% increased risk for stroke mortality, according to an American Heart Association's presidential advisory on rural health. Monument Health is committed to changing that. For its efforts to optimize stroke care and reduce gaps in rural health outcomes, Monument Health has received the American Heart Association's Get With The Guidelines(R)- Stroke Rural Recognition Silver award. Stroke is the No. 4 cause of death and a leading cause of disability in the U.S, according to the American Heart Association's 2026 Heart Disease and Stroke Statistics Report. A stroke occurs when a blood vessel supplying the brain is blocked by a clot or ruptures, preventing blood and oxygen from reaching brain tissue. When this happens, brain cells begin to die. Early detection and rapid treatment are critical to improving survival, minimizing disability and supporting faster recovery. The American Heart Association recognizes the importance of health care services provided to people living in rural areas by rural hospitals that play a vital role in initiation of timely evidence-based care. For that reason, all rural hospitals participating in Get With The Guidelines - Stroke are eligible to receive award recognition based on a unique methodology focused on early acute stroke performance metrics. "We are proud that our teams at Monument Health are being recognized for the important work we do every day to improve the lives of people in Western South Dakota who are affected by stroke, giving them the best possible chance of recovery and survival," said Thomas Worsley, Monument Health President of Spearfish Hospital and Hills Markets. "With hospitals in rural communities, we face challenges such as extended interfacility transportation times and limited staffing resources. We have made it a priority to ensure those challenges never compromise the standard of care our stroke patients receive. Rural communities deserve high-quality stroke care. I'm proud of our team's commitment to stroke care excellence and this achievement." This recognition goes to hospitals for their commitment to acute stroke care excellence, demonstrated through performance on guideline-directed measures including intravenous thrombolytic therapy, timely hospital inter-facility transfer, dysphagia screening, symptom timeline and deficit assessment documentation, emergency medical services communication, brain imaging and stroke expert consultation. "Patients and health care professionals in Western South Dakota face unique health care challenges and opportunities," said Karen E. Joynt Maddox, M.D., MPH, chair of the American Heart Association Quality Oversight Committee and co-author on the Association's advisory on rural health. "Monument Health has advanced the important work of improving care for all Americans, regardless of where they live." About Monument Health Headquartered in Rapid City, S.D., Monument Health is a community-based health care system with a mission to make a difference, every day. The system offers care in 31 medical specialties and serves 14 communities across western South Dakota and in eastern Wyoming. With over 6,300 physicians and caregivers, Monument Health is composed of 5 hospitals and more than 40 medical clinics and specialty centers. Monument Health is a member of the Mayo Clinic Care Network. About Get With The Guidelines(R) Get With The Guidelines(R) is the American Heart Association/American Stroke Association's hospital-based quality improvement program that provides hospitals with the latest research-based guidelines. Developed with the goal of saving lives and hastening recovery, Get With The Guidelines has touched the lives of more than 18 million patients since 2001. For more information, visit heart.org.