Jim Poltrock is the Division Chief of Emergency Medical Services for Kenosha Fire Department and has been since 2008 and with KFD for 26 years. He is the son of former Fire Chief and Rotarian Jerry Poltrock, but Jim never got to serve under his dad, as he joined KFD 7 years after Jerry's retirement. Jim spoke to us today about Mobile Integrated Healthcare (MIH) or Community Paramedicine, as it is called in other cities. What is MIH? It is the provision of non-emergent healthcare using patient-centered, mobile resources in the out of hospital environment - assisting with chronic disease management, preventive care, pathway int the healthcare system, and post discharge follow-up. MIH is non-emergent, makes home visits, proactive, integrated and value added. MIH will help to identify underlying health problems by doing a safety evaluation, developing relationships, educating and advocating with and for the patient. MIH collaborates with with many other services/departments (i.e.health department, ADRC, hospitals/clinics - KFD) to help the patient. MIH will obtain vital signs, provide assistance with medication reconciliation and refill, provide telehealth and make patient referrals as needed and calling the patients physician to inform and update. They will also confirm that the patient has working smoke detectors and CO2 detectors in the home. In 2019 KFD assisted with 10,597 patients. 49 people were 6.6% of these calls (~14 calls/person!). Top 115 callers accounted for 10.89% of calls. One individual called 52 times! He said these patients often have a chronic disease, no insurance and unable to manage the disease. Jim went to UW Milwaukee School of Nursing to receive his CPT certification, 200 hours of on-line training, followed by clinicals. He has completed an application thru Advancing a Healthy WI Endowment fund, asking for $400,000 to initiate the full program here. We hope he gets it, Kenosha is behind the times with this program and it will benefit our community greatly! Keep up the great work Jim and KFD! Thank you!
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Lisa Neubauer - Appeals Court Judge since 2008, serving Kenosha, Racine and Walworth county, was out guest Tuesday. Lisa shared that although she is not a Rotarian, she is very familiar with because her child went to Indonesia as a Rotary Exchange student and in turn, they hosted a Rotary Exchange student from Germany. Lisa stated that she loves our state, our county and our democracy and to let us all know that the Appeals courts are fundamental to democracy! The Appeals Court judges see over 2400 cases/year. 3 judges review cases and determine if a mistake was made or not. Appeals court judges are fighting for independent and fighting for the rule of the law. She stated that dark money is the cancer of the court system. She has dedicated her life to law and justice. This commitment and her work ethic come from her parents. Her dad was a physician with the Navy Seals. He dedicated his career to his patients and was there for them no matter what. Made house calls and saw patients 7 days/week. She remembers during a bad snowstorm, he took a snowmobile to make visits. Her mom tutored and taught English as a 2nd language. Both her parents demonstrated and taught the value of making your community better. She decided to go into law after attending a concert in Chicago. She was an undergrad student at UW Madison and she and some friends went to the concert. When they came out, all the cars around the venue were ticketed and one of her friends took a ticket off of a car and was arrested. She went to the police station to bail him out and she was told she would be taken back and strip searched. She had never even been arrested and her friend who was arrested - was NOT strip searched. She knew then that this was not right and she filed suit and the American Civil Liberties union picked it up and challenged the City of Chicago's police department policy on strip searching woman for any misdemeanor or less! She became Jane Doe #1 and they WON! She, along with a female teacher from Racine, a Supreme Court judges wife who got out of the car on the wrong side of the taxi, and 2 nuns who who ran a homeless shelter and all had been stripped searched, appeared on Phil Donohue following the trial to tell their story. Strip Searching had impacted over 10,000 woman during the time it was enforced. Realized then the importance of Appeals courts when other court systems fail the and this gives them an opportunity to appeal. She reminded all of us that when voting to remember how important qualifications & merit of a person matter and we need to rally around this in order to maintain the independence of the courts. We want no thumbs on the scale, no ideology.
Classification Talks: Today we had 72 years of Rotary speaking with us!!
Tom McTernan graduated from the Universityof Notre Dame in 1959, in that same year he got married July 4 and began active duty in the Airforce in August and continued in active duty until he joined the Reserves in 1988. After his service, he worked at RW Baird and then served as both the Business Manager and Executive Director of St. Joe's High School. He also worked as the Business Manager for St. Mary's Parish in Burlington until retirement in 2006. He joined Rotary in 1985. Tom and his wife Pauline have 6 children, 12 grandchildren and 2 great-grandchildren.
Bill Hittman: Bill was 1 of 5 children, he has 3 sisters and 2 brothers. He graduated from Muskego HS in 1963. He graduated from UW Stout and worked in machine manufacturing and got his first teaching job in 1968. He married in 1969, graduated with his Master's from UWMilwaukee in 1974 and was the Asst. Principal at Whitnall HS and became the Superintendent of of the Whitnall School District in 1983. In 1994 he became the Superintendent of the Sheboygan School District and after returing, in 2002 became the Prinicpal of Lakeview Tech until his official retirement in June 2017. Bill joined Rotary in 1983.
