Issue link: https://www.e-digitaleditions.com/i/1259963
SiG MT 36 Evidence of Benefis' community involvement can be found nearly everywhere you look. In fiscal year 2018, they contributed over $20 million to various community benefit programs and services, helping to continue programs such as the Boys & Girls Club, the Great Falls Children's Receiving Home, the Great Falls Food Bank's Backpack4kids program, and the Junior League of Great Falls. Benefis also provided trauma kits and CPR manikins to help local students, magnifiers for low-vision youth at the Montana School for the Deaf and Blind, and a chairli and various medical supplies to the Great Falls Rescue Mission. Conducting clinical research and providing education opportunities for health professionals – including scholarships, onsite training, and emergency medical responder courses – are also at the forefront of the health system's priorities. Although today's healthcare environment may look very different than the circumstances the Sisters and the Deaconesses operated under over a century ago, the desire to assist those desperate for help remains at the core of the health system's purpose. Included in the organization's $20 million of community contributions in 2018 was over $18 million worth of free and subsidized medical services for those who cannot afford them, helping to ensure that no one is turned away. Goodnow says he believes Great Falls' heroic medical pioneers would be proud to witness the state-of-the-art facilities that have resulted from their painstaking efforts. "If we could bring our Founders from 1892 and 1896 forward to today, they would be astounded and incredibly impressed by what Benefis Health System has become," Goodnow says. "And, it would give us the chance to thank them for those seeds they planted so very long ago." Holly Matkin has spent most of her life on her family's fourth-generation cattle and elk ranch, where she also works as a freelance writer for various local and national publications. S MT Nurses diligently document patient records in 1973. North Central Mercy Flight established in 1983. Skilled nurses deliver quality care to a hospitalized patient. Ushering a new life into the world is a team effort.