Friday morning is the public celebration of a new era of health care in Allen County.
The 11 a.m. ribbon cutting celebrates a three-year effort to build a new hospital that comes with a new name, the Allen County Regional Hospital.
This has been no small feat, but was made much easier by the widespread public buy-in at the outset.
In the Nov. 2, 2010, referendum, voters approved by a 72-percent margin a quarter-cent sales tax directed to the hospital’s construction. Before that, Iola commissioners agreed to commit up to $350,000 a year for 10 years from its sales taxes.
The commitments signaled a belief that we, as a county, believe in our future, and realize it takes a brick-and-mortar investment to paint that picture rosy.
The hospital employs in the neighborhood of 150 full-time employees. Among area industries, they are the best paid and the best educated. By profession, people are their first priority.
They are precisely the kind of people we want in our neighborhoods. Smart, caring and hard-working.
With a workforce like this, and growing, think of the opportunities the hospital’s success will mean to the county as a whole.
AS A FACILITY, the new hospital is not only state-of-the-art in its new technologies, it’s also downright beautiful. Patient rooms look out across the wide expanse of fields. To the east, the corn is about due cutting. To the south, a pond is nestled among the fields.
Each room has a private bathroom. The earth tones of the tiles make for a warm environment. Nothing looks sterile, though you know the opposite is true.
At the time county commissioners approved construction of the new hospital, they set a price tag of $30 million, reasoning that was well within range of local support.
Of that, $25 million was to go to hospital construction, while the other $5 million would be needed for start-up capital, once the hospital severed its lease agreement with Hospital Corporation of America.
While the relationship with HCA was always good, and in fact, several administrators remain on its rolls, the time to cut ties became evident when the Nashville-based corporation voiced no interest in building a new hospital, though it agreed it was a necessity.
That left the county with little choice but to go it alone after 28 years of depending on outside entities for the hospital’s upkeep and management.
