Northern Wyoming News - Serving the Big Horn Basin for over 100 years

WORLAND – Rita Miller currently works as the manager of respiratory and cardiopulmonary rehab at Washakie Medical Center, where she's just celebrated working for 20 years.

Miller has lived in Worland since 1986. She grew up in Idaho and Montana.

"I actually was eight years with Lutheran Hills Systems when they were here. I originally started as a rover, so I worked in administration, medical records, was a pharmacy tech, purchasing manager, and then I was in clinical informatics as Banner," Miller said. She also did sleep studies for five years when Banner Health had a sleep lab in their respiratory department. Miller added that they still conduct at-home sleep studies, and she is registered as a sleep technologist.

"So I still do all of that scoring. I still have a piece of it," she said.

Miller has been a respiratory therapist since 1994 and a sleep technician since 2009. She has her associate's degree in respiratory, bachelor's degree in health care management and concentration in health informatics.

"One of my favorite things about my job is the big variety," Miller said. "That variety of still being able to take care of patients, but still that management piece of educating and developing my team."

She added that federal and state regulations can sometimes make her job a challenge.

"It can also be a challenge in such a small, rural area to recruit. The one thing that makes it easiest to meet those challenges is probably my team at the hospital, and not just in respiratory, but it doesn't become a single department team, it's that collaboration between nursing, surgery, administration, all of the moving parts in the hospital that makes up the team that makes it all the much easier to meet those challenges," Miller said.

As a working manager, Miller's job includes work as a respiratory therapist, running outpatient diagnostics, holter monitoring and offering respiratory treatment for those having respiratory difficulties.