photo by Rowan of Ravara

RANDOLPH – Gifford Medical Center will hold its second annual Randolph Antique and Artisan’s Fair on Saturday, July 20.

The fair is from 9 a.m. to 2 p.m. in the Randolph hospital’s Route 12 park space, and the hospital is looking for vendors to participate.

“We already have great interest from vendors and crafters,” said organizer Amanda Wheeler, “and are excited to welcome more to this successful event.”

Individuals and businesses selling antiques, architectural salvage, collectibles, crafts, unique items, vintage clothing and more are invited. Up to five food vendors will also be welcomed.

Lot sizes are 15-feet by 15-feet with up to three lots available per person/business. Lots are $20 each.

Not accepted are animals, cars, junk or merchandise from distributors such as Pampered Chef, Avon, Snap-on tools, etc.

The event will be held rain or shine. Vendors must supply their own tents, should they want them. Tables are available for a nominal fee on a first-come basis.

Space is limited. Call Wheeler at 728-2238 or e-mail awheeler@giffordmed.org by June 28 to reserve a space while they last.

Hurricane Irene ravaged the state of Vermont last year with heavy rains, but not even a torrential downpour could slow down Gifford Medical Center in Randolph, considered to be one of the top hospitals in central Vermont.

Here are 10 things to know about Gifford Medical Center.

1. Joseph Woodin is the administrator and CEO of Gifford Medical Center. He has led the hospital since 1999.

2. David Sanville serves as Gifford Medical Center’s CFO.

3. As a critical access hospital, Gifford Medical Center has 25 beds. It also has a rehabilitation unit, a birthing center and a 30-bed nursing home.

4. Gifford Medical Center has 589 full- and part-time employees, including 100 people on its medical staff. Physicians and clinicians are spread across 30 different medical specialties and categories.

5. According to Gifford Medical Center’s 2011 annual report, net revenue totaled nearly $64 million. GMC recorded $1.26 million in net income for a profit margin of 2 percent.

6. In 2011, Gifford Medical Center recorded 1,811 inpatient admissions, 1,300 short stay or same-day outpatient admissions and more than 68,000 other outpatients. The hospital also performed more than 2,900 surgeries and more than 7,300 emergency treatments.

7. Last year, the National Rural Health Association named Gifford Medical Center as one of the top 100 CAHs in America. The rankings were based on the Hospital Strength Index from iVantage Health Analytics. The HIS incorporates 56 different measures of performance, including a hospital’s market strength, quality measures and balance sheet ratios.

8. John Gifford, MD, a local physician, founded the hospital in 1903. He almost closed the hospital after two years due to high expenses and the demands of running a hospital alone with only two nurses. However, local community members raised enough money to keep the hospital open, which officially became the Randolph Sanatorium. After Dr. Gifford died in 1933 from an infection he contracted while performing surgery, the hospital’s shareholders decided to rename the hospital Gifford Memorial Hospital. In 1991, it became Gifford Medical Center.

9. In 1989, Gifford Medical Center became one of the first hospitals in the country to support primary care practices in rural areas. It opened or acquired four different community health centers between 1989 and 1994.

10. In March 2011, Vermont Gov. Peter Shumlin appointed Gifford Medical Center obstetrician/gynecologist Ellamarie Russo-DeMara, MD, to the State Board of Health.

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Born in Massachusetts, LaRosa grew up in Shelburne. She went on to major in environmental studies and conservation biology at Middlebury College, but heart surgery her freshman year had her changing career choices.

LaRosa had a congenital heart defect that wasn’t discovered until college. “I was inspired by the nurses who cared for me,” said LaRosa, who graduated from Middlebury and immediately joined the master’s entry nursing program at the University of Vermont.
She completed the one-year program, earning her registered nurse licensure, and went on to complete her master’s degree at the University of Vermont to become a family nurse practitioner.

She previously worked as a registered nurse in a variety of fields, including as a pediatric and family nurse with the Visiting Nurse Association of Chittenden and Grand Isle Counties and as an operating room nurse at Northwestern Medical Center in St. Albans.

Her experiences in orthopedic surgery coupled with her own athletic interests led her to the new position at the Sharon Health Center.

“This was the ideal, dream job,” LaRosa says, noting she is excited to practice high-quality medicine in a rural setting.

“Even when I lived in Burlington, I was familiar with Gifford. Gifford has a reputation as a place with really high-quality care and as a small hospital that does a lot of big things,” LaRosa says.

She also praises the Sharon Health Center’s staff, facility and interdisciplinary team. The Sharon Health Center has two podiatric surgeons, a sports medicine physician, a sports medicine chiropractor, an athletic trainer and physical therapists. It is also home to X-ray and MRI diagnostic imaging.

LaRosa is board-certified by the American Nurses Credentialing Center and a member of the Vermont Nurse Practitioners Association. Her clinical interests include sports medicine, especially for adolescents, and surgery.

In her free time, she is a cyclist, runner, and skier. She currently mountain bikes with the 1K2GO-Onion River Sports cycling team and is a former youth Nordic ski coach. She now lives in Washington.

Call her or another member of the Sharon Health Center sports medicine team at (802) 763-8000.

Healthier Living Workshops are six-week classes offered through the Vermont Blueprint for Health for people with chronic conditions and their caregivers. They are offered for free throughout the year by Gifford Medical Center and led by trained facilitators.

This new class, being offered for the first time at Gifford, has a special focus on pain.

Called the Chronic Pain Self-Management Workshop, it will be held Tuesdays, Aug. 21 through Sept. 25 from 6-8:30 p.m. in Gifford’s Conference Center on the first floor of the hospital in Randolph.

The workshop will cover coping with chronic illness and chronic pain; how to feel more in control of your pain and health; improving problem solving skills; how to work with health care providers to maximize your ability to manage your illness and pain; how to balance activity and rest; healthy eating; gentle movement exercises and more.

“Chronic pain … includes many types of conditions from a variety of causes. There is no one treatment or approach that is right for everybody. There are a number of things people with chronic pain can do to feel better … (to) better manage pain and help you become more active and more involved in life,” according to the literature from the Vermont Blueprint for Health.

Participants are encouraged to wear comfortable clothing for the exercise portion and to sign up soon with Gifford Blueprint Patient Access Coordinator Zach Bean at 728-7100, ext. 6.

Gifford Medical Center is located at 44 S. Main St. (Route 12) just south of Randolph village. The Conference Center is marked with a green awning. For handicapped access, go in the main entrance and take the elevator to the first floor.

The classes are for parents, other family members, friends and caregivers of infants and children and will be held from 6-8 p.m. in the Family Center at Gifford. Participants need only take one class.

The classes will be led by experts from White River Valley Ambulance service in Bethel and are organized by care manager and certified childbirth educator Nancy Clark of Gifford.

The class cost is $20, which is reduced thanks to a gift from the Lamson-Howell Foundation of Randolph.

Call Clark at 728-2274 to register or for more information.

The Family Center is beside Gifford Ob/Gyn & Midwifery located just before the hospital on South Main Street (Route 12) in Randolph.

Bly and Ladd, known for their past performances at the Three Stallion Inn, sing and play “boomer music and everything in between.”

Expect everything from Fats Waller to Jefferson Airplane, rounded out with a little Lulu, says Bly.

Bly works at Gifford. “I’m excited to play for co-workers and friends and to be part of Gifford’s new community concert series,” she says.

The performance is from 7-8:15 p.m. and is free and open to the public.

The Gifford park is located between the hospital and the Thrift Shop on South Main Street (Route 12) south of Randolph village. Ample parking is available onsite.

Anesthesiology
Lee Balaklaw, MD
Anthony Fazzone, MD
Dennis Henzig, MD
Eric Kent, MD
Jon-Richard Knoff, MD
Nina Sharp, MD

Cardiology
Bruce Andrus, MD
Timothy Beaver, MD

Chiropractic Sports Medicine
Hank Glass, DC

Emergency Medicine
Steven Fisher, MD
Marc Keller, MD
Todd Morrell, MD
Saul Nurok, MD
Kevin Rodgers, MD
Scott Rodi, MD
Brian Sargent, DO
Wendell Smith, MD
Joshua White, MD
Lucy Wollaeger, MD

Endocrinology
Susanne Trost, MD

Family Medicine
Kenneth Borie, DO
Terry Cantlin, DO
Marcus Coxon, MD
Jonna Goulding, MD
Robert Kiess, MD
Brian Sargent, DO
Mark Seymour, DO
Sheri Brown, FNP-BC
Maria Cabri, FNP, CNM
Tammy Gerdes, PA-C
Patrick Kearney, PA-C
Kim Ladue, FNP-BC
Megan O’Brien, FNP-BC
Starr Strong, PA-C

Gastroenterology
Eric Ganguly, MD

General Surgery
Edward Borrazzo, MD
Ovleto Ciccarelli, MD
Nikki Gewirz, PA-C
Maury Smith, MD
Laurie Spaulding, MD

Hospitalist Medicine
Mandeep Hundal, MD
Martin Johns, MD
Joshua Plavin, MD, MPH
Wendell Smith, MD
Sheri Brown, FNP-BC
Sue Burgos, PA-C
Joshua Gleiner, PA-C
Patrick Kearney, PA-C
Megan O’Brien, FNP-BC
Fred Staples, PA-C

Internal Medicine
James Currie, MD
Milton Fowler, MD
Mark Jewett, MD
Cristine Maloney, MD
Mary LaBrecque, ANP-BC

Internal Medicine and Pediatrics
David Pattison, MD, MPH
Joshua Plavin, MD, MPH

Mental Health
Cory Gould, MA
Robert Vaillancourt, MA

Midwifery
Kipp Bovey, CNM
Donna Butler, CNM
Laureli Morrow, CNM
Kathryn Saunders, CNM
Meghan Sperry, CNM
Tanya Waters, CNM

Naturopathic Medicine
Christopher Hollis, ND
Erica Koch, ND

Neurology
Robin Schwartz, MD

Obstetrics/Gynecology
Brent Burgee, MD
Dina Levin, MD
Ellamarie Russo-DeMara, DO
Lawrence Slocki, MD

Oncology
John Valentine, MD

Ophthalmology
Christopher Soares, MD

Orthopedics
Bess Brackett, MD
Stephanie Landvater, MD

Pain Management
Lan Nguyen-Knoff, MD

Pathology
Cathy Palmer, MD
Brian Travis, MD

Pediatric Cardiology
Niels Giddins, MD

Pediatrics
Louis DiNicola, MD
William Gaidys, MD
Elizabeth Jewett, MD
Joseph Pelletier, MD
Pamela Udomprasert, MD

Plastic Surgery
Guy Rochman, MD

Podiatry and Sports Medicine
Nicolas Benoit, DPM
Kevin McNamara, DPM
Robert Rinaldi, DPM
Paul Smith, DPM

Pulmonary Medicine
Marda Donner, MD

Radiology
John McIntyre, MD
Scott Smith, MD

Sports Medicine
Peter Loescher, MD

Urology
Michael Curtis, MD
John Daly, MD
Richard Graham, MD
Nancy Blessing, PA-C

Vascular Studies
Andrew Stanley, MD
Georg Steinthorsson, MD

The course is designed to teach children how to safely respond to a variety of home alone situations, including Internet and telephone safety, family communications, sibling care, personal and gun safety, and basic emergency care.

The course was created by the Southeastern Michigan and Oregon Trail Chapters of the American Red Cross to meet the needs of children who spend time alone without adult supervision. It helps kids understand the rules and responsibilities in a home alone situation and prepares them to anticipate potential problems and how to resolve them.

Children will engage in role playing, discussion, brainstorming and critical thinking. A video reviews the salient information, participants retain a workbook and relevant handouts, and each child will earn a certificate upon completion.

The course cost is $20 and it is being held at Gifford Medical Center’s new Family Center space at the hospital in Randolph. The Family Center is beside Gifford Ob/Gyn and Midwifery on Route 12 (South Main Street). Call Powers at (802) 649-1841 to register or Nancy Clark at Gifford at (802) 728-2274.

The course cost is reduced thanks to a gift from the Lamson-Howell Foundation of Randolph.

The course is for youth looking to learn how to be safe, responsible and successful babysitters.

Offered by instructor Jude Powers, it covers good business practices, basic care, diapering, safety, play, proper hand washing, handling infants, responding to injuries, decision making in emergencies, action plans and more.

Communication skills are emphasized along with being a good role model. Each participant will receive a certification card upon completion of the course and a reference notebook to take home.

Thanks to a grant from the Lamson-Howell Foundation of Randolph, the course cost is only $30. Participants should also bring their lunch.

Register by calling Powers at (802) 649-1841 or Nancy Clark at Gifford at (802) 728-2274. Space is limited.

The course cost is reduced thanks to a gift from the Lamson-Howell Foundation of Randolph.