Scott County faced same dilemma as Allen

SCOTT CITY — About two years ago, federal officials cited Scott County Hospital for a laundry list
of problems, including not having a fire extinguishing sprinkler system.
“They gave us something like 28 pages of deficiencies,” said Mark Burnett, the hospital’s administrator.
Besides those shortcomings, the 60-year-old hospital had run out of room for outpatient services.
The hospital did a feasibility study comparing possible options:
1. Remodeling the facility.
2. Remodeling and ex-panding.
3. Building a new hospital.
“When all the different factors were taken into consideration, the best option was to build a new building,” Burnett said.
The earthmoving phase of the $24 million project began in late August. Completion is set for May 2012.
“Scott City has always viewed itself as kind of a progressive small town, kind of a different small town,” Burnett said. “A lot of towns our size are struggling to hold on, but we’re actually anticipating a little growth in the 2010 census. Not much, but a little.”
Located 36 miles north of Garden City, Scott City is the county seat in Scott County, population 5,100.
In September 2009, Scott County voters approved a 30-year, $24 million bond issue, part of which will be paid for with a one-cent countywide sales tax. The remainder will be added to the county’s property tax mill levy.
The measure passed by a narrow margin: 838 to 783.
The hospital’s staff, along with the local physicians and their employees and several community leaders helped sell the project, Burnett said.
“I talked to anybody who’d listen,” he said, “but what really made the difference was that in the weeks before the election, the people in this group knocked on every door in town, asking people to vote for the hospital. I think that impressed people, even those who voted against it.”
Burnett said the project has taken a year to get off the drawing board because he and the hospital’s board refused to “spend $100,000 on architectural plans we wouldn’t be able to use,” if the measure had failed. Consequently, that planning began after the initiative passed.
The new hospital will maintain the current facility’s 25-bed capacity and its status as a critical access hospital, a federal designation allowing it to bill Medicare for 101 percent of its outpatient, inpatient, laboratory, physical therapy, and post-acute care costs.
Between 55 percent and 60 percent of the hospital’s patients are on Medicare.
The hospital, Burnett said, didn’t bank on its critical access status when calculating its bond obligations.
“We’re all for being a critical access hospital, but we’re not banking on it,” he said. “It’s not a guaranteed thing, so if it was to go away where would we be? The other thing is that it’s only 1 percent over your costs on just your Medicare patients. That’s not very much. It’s better than losing money but it’s not like you’re making money, either.”
Scott County Hospital is one of 83 critical access hospitals in Kansas.
The new facility, like the current one, will have obstetric and surgical units.
“We do some surgeries, we hope to do more,” Burnett said. “We’re one of the few hospitals in western Kansas that still does OB. We have nuclear imaging, we have a full range of ultrasound procedures, we have cardiac rehab in-house, and we have three respiratory therapists in-house.”
Cindy Samuelson, a spokeswoman for the Kansas Hospital Association, said Scott County Hospital is one of five critical access hospitals with major construction or remodeling projects currently underway. The others:
• Girard Medical Center, Girard.
• Rush County Memorial Hospital, La Crosse.
• Hospital District #1 of Rice County, Lyons.
• Saint Luke Hospital and Living Center, Marion.
“I think it’s safe to say that $24 million is a lot of money for a community the size of Scott City,” Samuleson said. “But the thing we have to remember is that most of our critical access hospitals were built in the 1950s, which today means if you’re not remodeling or rebuilding you’re moving toward being out of date.
“The other thing is that when communities are asked to demonstrate the importance of their hospitals, people will vote to keep the services in place,” she said. “I think that’s what we’re seeing in Scott County.”