The promise of Fort Scott getting a hospital is on shaky ground after learning that the prospective manager, Noble Health Corp., has recently closed the two hospitals it owns in Missouri.
“What has happened there certainly has caused us to pause, at the very least,” Clifton Beth, a Bourbon County commissioner, said in a phone conversation Friday morning.
Noble Health notified area citizens of the suspension of services at Audrain Community Hospital in Mexico, Mo., and Callaway Community Hospital in Fulton, Mo., in a posting on Facebook, citing a shortage of funds.
In July, city and county officials signed an agreement with Noble Health to conduct a feasibility study for the prospects of reopening the hospital in Fort Scott. The former Mercy Hospital closed in 2018. The county took ownership of the hospital in 2021.
The county paid $800,000 and the city $200,000 for the feasibility study, using federal funds allocated through the American Rescue Plan Act.
Bourbon County received a total $2 million in ARPA funds, and had said it would contribute the full amount to finance certain costs related to reopening the hospital.
Commissioner Beth said he doesn’t know if “either side will now exercise the option” to pursue an agreement.
IN JANUARY, Noble Health officials announced to great fanfare that it was ready to move forward with what was to become the Noble Health Bourbon Community Hospital. Kansas Attorney General Derek Schmidt, U.S. Sen. Jerry Moran and Congressman Jake LaTurner all spoke at the Jan. 31 event.
Rob Harrington, executive director of Bourbon County Regional Economic Development, said “the feasibility study is 95% complete,” and that area leaders “are getting what they paid for.”
Harrington has a different opinion of Noble Health’s affairs in Missouri, saying, “What’s happened in Missouri has nothing to do with us in Fort Scott.”
As soon as next week, building contractors are expected to visit the hospital to see how it can be retrofitted to accommodate Noble’s plans, Harrington said.
Currently, Ascension Via Christi operates an emergency room out of the former hospital and the Community Health Center of Southeast Kansas operates a clinic there.
Ascension’s contract is for another year. The CHC/SEK is retrofitting the abandoned Price Chopper grocery store in Fort Scott to relocate its clinic and pharmacy there.
Beth said the feasibility study should be completed sometime in the next few weeks.
“Hopefully in the next month or two we’ll know what our options are. It may be an option to do nothing,” he said.
