Repairs to leaking showers in patient rooms at Allen County Regional Hospital could start in the near future, but a pending management change provides an opportunity to rethink their purpose.
The hospital last month received its final payment in a $175,000 legal settlement against construction firms involved in building the facility in 2013. Showers in several patient rooms began to leak immediately after construction wrapped up, and more were discovered later.
A Wichita construction firm that wasnt part of the original crew recently toured the hospital and is expected to submit a bid for repairs. How many rooms can be repaired will depend on the costs, with rooms with the worst leaks named a top priority.
ACRH trustee Jim Gilpin asked if they should hold off on repairs or reprioritize the list until a lease is finalized with Saint Lukes Health System of Kansas City. The board of trustees has said it intends to lease the hospital to Saint Lukes, which could start as early as January, but attorneys are still hammering out the details and a contract has not yet been finalized.
Saint Lukes might want to repurpose some patient rooms rather than repair them, Gilpin said.
He singled out four rooms on the south end of the hospital as rooms that could be repurposed. Those four are among eight with the worst leaks.
Larry Peterson, interim CEO and chief financial officer, said the repair work is unlikely to start until after the contract is finalized. There should be time to discuss the matter before any repairs are made, Peterson said.
ACRH and Saint Lukes officials have discussed converting some patient rooms into outpatient clinic space, board of trustees president Loren Korte said.
Were pretty tight on clinic space, Korte said. We have specialists who come from the city and sometimes we dont have enough room for everybody who wants to see them.
Currently, visiting specialists use either makeshift space at the hospital or an office building to the east of G&W Foods to see patients. Ever since the hospital was built, trustees have wanted to consolidate specialty services such as cardiology and pulmonology and have considered building a separate medical office building on hospital grounds.
The hospital has 21 patient rooms with 25 available beds. A reduction in patient rooms would fit a national healthcare shift to outpatient care rather than admitting patients for a hospital stay. Chief of Staff Dr. Charles Wanker said ACRH officials met to discuss new Medicare guidelines on what qualifies as in-patient care for reimbursement. Instead of being admitted as a patient, hospital staff will keep someone under observation.
Insurance companies, both public and private, are trying to force hospitals into more of an outpatient model, Peterson added.
We have some (commercial) insurance companies literally wanting everyone to be outpatient, Peterson said. They want you to fit it into observation as much as possible.
Patient counts have continued to lag expectations. In August, the hospital averaged just 4.7 patients each day, about half of what they had expected at 8.8 patients per day.
Outpatient numbers, though, came in strong with 1,126 total outpatient visits, including 537 emergency room visits in August.
Weve had some really good revenues on the outpatient side, Peterson said.
