September 15, 2020

Samantha Mango:
Hi, I’m Samantha Mango and welcome to “Sullivan 180 Presents… Take Five!” Our guest today is Rolland “Boomer” Bojo, Jr., from Garnett Health Medical Center, Catskills, the Grover Herman division. Welcome Boomer! Thanks for joining us today.

Rolland “Boomer” Bojo, Jr.:
Thank you for having me.

Samantha Mango:
Do you mind introducing yourself, your job title and a brief description about your organization?

Rolland “Boomer” Bojo, Jr.:
Sure. I would love to. So, my name is Rolland Bojo, better known as “Boomer”. I am the vice president of patient care, chief nursing officer for Garnet Health Medical Center, Catskills, and the administrator of our critical access hospital in Callicoon.

Samantha Mango:
Tell us a little bit about how both Garnet Harris Grover Herman hospital and your staff have been dealing with the challenges of COVID-19 recently.

Rolland “Boomer” Bojo, Jr.:
Sure. A lot of people may not even be familiar with the term of Garnet Health Medical Center, as we have re- renamed ourselves and actually that became official on June 18th, (which was my 50th birthday). So it was kind of a exciting day! Thank you. We decided that working, you know, we had Orange Regional and Catskill Regional Medical Centers of which Catskill, we have the Harris Division and the Callicoon division. So we felt like we needed one kind of unifying name to really bring us together, because we are ‘a system’ and ‘a system’ that works very well together! So during COVID, we were ahead of the curve. We have always had a ‘pandemic plan’ that we have worked on and kept up to date and done some drills with. But leadership for the system really had the forethought:. when we started seeing things happening in other parts of the world, we said.. “we need to take a look at this and we need to come up with what we would do if this actually comes to the U S and we are affected”. That served us very, very well. When things started getting really crazy, we had plans in place as ‘a system’. So I think overall, we did a really good job responding to COVID. We saw a large number of patients. I say Sullivan County was kind of that transition County between the really tough areas from Orange County, down, through New York City, and then the rest of New York state that really at that time didn’t get hit quite so bad. So we were really that transition County and I think we were able to step up and really be a leader in the community, working with public health and fire and EMS and emergency management from the County and Sullivan County in general, just to make sure that we were meeting the needs of the community. And I say this all the time: we’re very fortunate to be in this county. This county is very supportive of this hospital, and the connections that we have formed throughout the county are so, so beneficial. And I think people in general don’t really realize at times like these, how important relationships are, and how important teamwork is. And this again was another prime example of that

Samantha Mango:
You see in general are the biggest needs of our Sullivan County residents, and how can they get help from the hospital system?

Rolland “Boomer” Bojo, Jr.:
I think the biggest thing right now is just, I think people are still a little scared about coming into a healthcare institution in general. I think that people still are weary of all of that. There may be COVID or they may get COVID, coming to a health care institution and it’s actually probably the best place you want to be because, at least for our system, we have taken extensive infection control practices. There are people that go around all day long and all they do is clean high touch areas: elevator buttons, door handles, the railings. It’s really been done very, very well, because we want to protect our residents, our patients, and our staff. So by people not coming to health care as much, I think they’re running into trouble. So they’re maybe not following up with a primary care doctor quite so frequently, or they’re waiting: they’re having that chest pain and they’re waiting and saying, ‘well, I don’t really want to go to the ER because I don’t want to get COVID’ and then 12 hours later, they’re having the big heart attack. And so the one number, one thing I think is just really encouraging people to know that healthcare is safe. We are here to help you. So please, if you need healthcare, please come to receive it.

Samantha Mango:
Is there anything else that you’d like to add?

Rolland “Boomer” Bojo, Jr.:
I know I’ve said a lot about this, but the community support was just, has just been unbelievable. And I honestly don’t know if we would have made it through, but it would have been a lot harder on us without the support. We saw a lot of love from the community and a lot of people:, we had people just show up outside and just pulled up banners saying, THANK YOU! and “You’re our Heroes”. And people don’t normally think of nurses and doctors and housekeepers and those types of people being ‘heroes’, but they were, and they are.

Samantha Mango:
Can you let us know the best way to reach you and, or your organization for more information?

Rolland “Boomer” Bojo, Jr.:
So probably the easiest way would be our website, which is www.Garnethealth.org. Or if somebody just wanted to reach out to me directly or had questions, they can contact our main number, which is (845) 794-3300. And just ask for me.

Samantha Mango:
Well, thanks so much for your time and thanks for being here, Boomer and big thanks to Garnet Health for all of their efforts the past couple months, and always for Sullivan County residents.

Rolland “Boomer” Bojo, Jr.:
Thank you. And thank you for having me and thank you for all that you guys are doing!