‘Landlocked’ hospital held back

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June 2, 2010 - 12:00 AM

Turnout sparse at facilities meeting

Only a handful of citizens attended Tuesday evening’s meeting to discuss the future of Allen County Hospital.
Hospital Facility Commission members who have worked the past six months on researching viable options for local health care were visibly disappointed.
“Obviously, we had hoped for a greater turnout,” said Mary Ann Arnott, commission chairman.
Still, they went on with the prepared presentation at St. John’s Parish Center.
The format was intended to be a sounding board for commission members as to what locals are feeling about the current state of their hospital. That happened, as well as the members recapping findings from their visits to seven area hospitals all of which have been either extensively renovated or have built anew.
The tours, “have been a revelation,” Arnott said.
Allen County’s 58-year-old hospital poses two problems, commission member Karen Lee said. Not only is it failing to meet the needs of Allen County residents, but it also is a turnoff to physicians considering practicing here.
“They’re not going to come here and feel they are going back in time,” she said of the current hospital’s antiquated layout and design.
In 10 years’ time three-fourths of the local physicians face retirement, Lee said, stressing the need for a hospital that appeals to today’s generation of health professionals.
Ted Stahl worried that the current hospital “can’t draw the medical staff you’d like to have because Iola doesn’t have the facility they want to practice in.”
Dr. Brian Wolfe said his son, Dr. Eric Wolfe, has voiced an interest to practice family medicine and obstetrics in Iola, mainly because “two sets of grandparents live here.
“But the obstetrics area at the hospital is essentially the same as when I came to Iola in 1982,” he said. “My son would face a little bit of a culture shock when he sees how OB is practiced here.” ACH lacks the digital equipment commonly used in up-to-date hospitals, Wolfe said, and which today’s new doctors expect.
Besides its appearance and inability to readily incorporate new technologies including electronic medical records, the hospital faces a geographic obstacle: “It’s landlocked,” said Stahl. He was echoed later by citizen Larry Macha and commission member Terry Sparks.
Situated between Madison and East streets, the hospital sits on four acres and is boxed in by residential neighborhoods in all directions.
Citizen Chuck Richey said he had been led to believe that the hospital had been designed to have a third floor added at some point.
Richard Lundstrom, an architect with the Hospital Facilities Group, Wichita, and hired by the county to study the issue, dismissed that option for two reasons.
First, adding a new floor on top of an old building, doesn’t solve the problems of the old building. Second, trying to conduct construction while keeping the hospital open for business is “problematic” specifically for issues concerning disease and infection control and for such physical things as keeping the elevator in operation and other challenges.
“You can’t expect to shut the hospital down for 18 months while you remodel,” Lundstrom said of a best-case scenario.
Macha said a remodel also would not include installing new sewer and water lines. “You can’t replace everything,” he said. “We’d still have a 60-year-old” infrastructure.
The extensive remodeling done at Labette Health in Parsons has taken five years and cost more than had they opted to build new, said Arnott. Parsons chose to remodel because it was “stuck to the land,” she said.
Chanute also has extensively remodeled Neosho Memorial Regional Medical Center because it had the land on which to expand, Sparks said.
Richey worried that if a new hospital were to be built, it would only need remodeling “in another 10 years.”
That’s to be expected, commission members said, to meet the fast-changing needs of medicine and to remain competitive.
Sparks said, “We’re way past where we should have been,” regarding upgrades to the hospital. “It’s like buying a house and then never touching it for 20 years. We have big needs to address.”
Allen County ranks 94th out of 105 counties as being able to meet the health needs of its citizens, according to information commission members presented at the beginning of the meeting.
Lundstrom said his team of engineers is considering four options regarding the future of the hospital.
    1. If it can somehow be expanded on its present site;
    2. If a new hospital can be built next to the current one, and the old be demolished;
    3. If a new hospital can be built on a new site; or,
    4. Do nothing — and what the consequences would be of that.
Iola Commissioner Bill Shirley said he thought the last suggestion, was not an option.
“Both Iola and Allen County commissions have said this is the ‘Year of the Hospital,’” he said this morning. “We have pledged to act on this.”

ALLEN COUNTY doesn’t need a bigger hospital, said Gary McIntosh, a county commissioner, in an effort to dispel some common misconceptions of the purpose of the study of the current hospital’s efficacy.
The 25-bed hospital averages 13 patients a day.
That low number of patients gives ample room for the hospital to attract more patients and remain within the 25-bed cap to qualify as a Critical Care Access hospital, which entitles the hospital to generous federal reimbursements for its Medicare patients.
If it were to exceed the 25-patient count, two options exist.
First, a hospital can exceed the 25-patient count “for a short period of time,” without risk of losing the special designation, said Joyce Heismeyer, chief executive officer of ACH. 
Second, the higher number of patients could be shared with a neighboring hospital such as in Chanute, said Commissioner Shirley.
“Dennis Franks, (CEO of Neosho Regional) has said he’s eager to cooperate with us in such a situation,” said Shirley.
The hospital needs to be reconfigured to meet today’s ever-changing medical needs, said Sparks.
“The hospital of the future is different,” he said. “The average stay is 2.8 days. We don’t need to build bigger to have empty beds, but to provide better services.”
Starks said the hospital needs to focus on a more diversified offering of outpatient services including rehabilitation for cardio-pulmonary related diseases and kidney dialysis and clinics for dermatology, pulmonary and endocrinology.
Such services “can be pretty profitable,” said Heismeyer.

A NEW design can provide better patient services, said Macha and Judy Brigham, city administrator.
Both related instances demonstating that the current hospital’s facilities were lacking.
Macha told of how he was unable to stay round the clock with his ailing mother because of the patient room’s tight design. When she was a patient in Wichita, however, its ample space and specially designed chairs that converted to miniature beds allowed him to be with her 24/7,  which not only was a comfort to the mother and son, but also to the nursing staff which was unable to be there all the time.
“She got better care in Wichita because I was able to be with her,” he said.
Brigham told of birthing suites available in modern hospitals and how they allowed a baby’s birth to be “a family event,” where family members gathered with the expectant parents right up until the birthing process began.
“It can be a very rewarding, nice experience,” Brigham said.

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