The best way Allen County residents can ensure the future of Allen County Regional Hospital is by voting to renew the quarter-cent countywide sales tax in Tuesday’s election.
The funds go toward maintaining both the hospital and its clinic next to G&W Foods.
The quarter-cent sales tax, which today raises about $740,000 a year, was initiated in 2010 to launch a new hospital, which opened in 2013. Altogether, the county levies a 1.25% sales tax. The other 1% is divided between the landfill and the county’s general fund.
The hospital tax is up for a vote every five years. It was most recently extended in 2020 by a 2-to1 margin.
The hospital is Allen County’s responsibility.
In 2020, a county-appointed board of trustees entered a lease agreement with St. Luke’s Health Care System. It included St. Luke’s assuming the county’s balance of what was initially $30 million in bonds and loans to build the hospital, relieving local taxpayers of much of the burden. Payments are scheduled through 2036.
The arrangement has been a win-win. St. Luke’s brings a wealth of expertise and services that a small, stand-alone hospital could not. And St. Luke’s benefits by Allen County taking advantage of those services.
The agreement also requires Allen County to invest in the hospital’s upkeep.
One way or another.
If Tuesday’s measure fails, funding for the hospital “will come out of property taxes,” John Brocker, Allen County commissioner, told area residents at a forum last month.
“We must have that money. It’s part of our lease agreement,” he said.
That’s not a threat. After all, having a hospital yields all kinds of advantages to Allen County.
Just think of the alternative, which is all too real.
Pat Patton, hospital administrator, recently briefed county commissioners of the plight of rural hospitals struggling to keep financially afloat as well as growing federal pressure to consolidate small hospitals into regional centers of care.
Rather than having individual hospitals in Chanute, Iola, and Garnett, the push could be to have “rural emergency medical facilities,” that provide only ER services and no overnight beds.
“If that happened here, patients who needed to stay two or three nights would have to go somewhere else,” Patton said.
