GIRARD — Expansion and remodeling of Girard Medical Center was a better fit than building a new hospital, Kenny Boyd, chief executive officer, told Allen Countians Wednesday afternoon.
Hospital Facility Commission members Mary Ann Arnott, Barbara Culbertson and Don Copley and County Commissioner Gary McIntosh toured the hospital. County commissioners expect recommendations later this month from the citizens advisory group and their consultant, Hospital Facilities Group of Wichita, about how to improve healthcare delivery through Allen County Hospital.
McIntosh and other county commissioners, Dick Works and Rob Francis, have ultimate responsibility of deciding whether to remodel Allen County Hospital, build a new hospital or do nothing at all.
“WE LOOKED at a new facility,” Boyd said, before directors embraced expansion and remodeling of Girard Medical Center.
The hospital had sufficient space to build a new structure at its site along K-47 at the west edge of Girard, Boyd said. Drawbacks included being set farther back from the road and a higher price tag. The hospital sits on 14 acres of a 40-acre tract. A clinic — four in Crawford County are adjuncts to GMC — is nearby. Others are in Frontenac, Arma and Cherokee.
Building a new hospital would have cost about $25 million, Boyd said, “more than we wanted to bite off.” Instead, management opted for a $14 million renovation and expansion project. The 30,000-square-foot expansion has just become fully operational and completion of 12,000 square feet of renovated space will be completed later this year.
The hospital is managed by locals. Five directors are elected from the hospital district, which includes all of Crawford County except the communities of Pittsburg, Frontenac and Arma. Directors are not paid. They oversee Boyd as CEO.
Hospital directors took advantage of money available through the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (stimulus money) to pay 20 percent of project costs and issued 20-year revenue bonds, at a 5.11 percent interest rate, for the other 80 percent. Bond proceeds also were used to retire a $500,000 in debt GMC had before the project started.
The hospital sets aside $18,000 each week to accumulate money to meet bond payments. Annual payment is $960,000, with the first due in September 2011, Boyd said.
The arrangement requires careful attention to expenses since the set-aside money is considered untouchable, Boyd added.
“We’d rather do it that way than try to build up cash in the operating fund to meet payments,” he said.
GIRARD MEDICAL Center is a critical access hospital of 25 beds. Four beds are dedicated to intensive care and a dozen for medical-surgical patients.
Critical access designation permits the hospital to bill Medicare for full cost of treatments and procedures.
Three patient rooms are outfitted with equipment to handle obese patients weighing up to 650 pounds, as well as those who need special assistance in movement because of bed sores or conditions that leave them with tender skin susceptible to abrasions. One ICU room has the special equipment.
Boyd said constant effort was made to ensure the hospital was patient- and employee-friendly.
A long hallway inside the main entrance, referred to as “main street” and coursing past three registration rooms with emphasis on privacy, gently expands from 14 feet to 20 feet wide. Color photographs hang along walls and pillars with cut rock facades are aesthetic accentuation.
Patient privacy and comfort are recurring themes. All rooms are private and large enough to accommodate family, including a love seat that converts to a full-size bed for those who want to stay overnight. Two flat screen TVs provide opportunities for patient and family to entertain themselves independently.
“We’re a TV society,” Boyd said.
The laboratory is conveniently near the hospital’s main entrance because of it being a high-traffic area with many out-patient users, he noted.
Lounges — they aren’t called waiting rooms because of the negative connotation, Boyd said — are positioned near the surgical suite and rooms where specialty services, such as physical therapy, are conducted. Staff also has a lounge outfitted with a small kitchen.
Between each set of two rooms is an alcove outfitted with a desk where medical staff may pause to record data electronically on a secure computer system. GMC is spending $1.1 million — it expects $800,000 in reimbursement from the federal government — on an electronic medical records system.
Other alcoves are interspersed along eight-foot-wide hallways in patient areas for easy storage of equipment that is likely to be needed at a moment’s notice; good use of “dead” space, Boyd called it.
Small but adequate consultation rooms are a part of the expanded hospital. “It’s a little difficult for a doctor to visit with family standing in a hallway,” Boyd said.
The older portion of the hospital, which opened in 1968, also is being refitted with emphasis on privacy, “something that wasn’t a concern when it was built,” he observed.
DAILY PATIENT census averages a touch over 13 plus another seven or so involved in senior health services, Boyd said.
GMC collaborates with Pittsburg’s Via Christi 188-bed hospital on delivery of specialty services, such as cardiology, but also competes with it and others in the area for primary care patients. The hospital has 16 active medical staff members, including five it employs and a sixth who works by contract. On staff are four general surgeons and two orthopedic specialists, including one who sees patients at the Girard clinic a stone’s throw from the hospital’s front door.
The clinics in Frontenac — which Boyd said drew a surprisingly large number of patients from Pittsburg — Arma and Cherokee are staffed daily by GMC physicians and assistants. They funnel patients to the hospital.
Boyd also thinks efforts to hire staff members who fit the facility and are compatible with other employees are a key to GMC’s success.
“We have the highest registered nurse salaries in the area and when we hire staff we put great focus on what people think about us,” Boyd said. “We work to get people who fit in. You can teach skills but you can’t change attitudes.” A part of the hiring process includes input from representatives of all departments, “even when we hire housekeeping staff,” he said.
Boyd has been at Girard nearly four years, coming from an administrative position with a West Virginia hospital. He began with a two-year contract and with one-year contracts this year and last, which he said was the industry standard.
Soon after Boyd arrived discussions about an upgrade of GMC’s capabilities quickened. When actuarial surveys confirmed the hospital would be capable of generating sufficient revenue to meet daily operations — an average of $40,000 — and deal with debt service of the $14 million project, hospital directors signed on to the project, he said.
A foundation, with a part-time director soon to become full time, has raised $1.9 million, including one gift of $1 million, for enhancement of the hospital.
The hospital district has latitude to levy property taxes and has had a levy of 1.5 mills for “about 40 years,” which raises $74,000 a year, Boyd said. The property tax infusion is a minuscule portion of the hospital financial formula.
te without a special election is the April 5, 2011 countywide school and city election.
