Hospital to hold meetings about levy

MINERAL COUNTY – A few have already been held but Mineral Community Hospital representatives plan to hold more meetings across Mineral County to make their case for a levy that will come up before voters during the next election.

The levy would last for two years and is designed to help pay off debt the facility has accrued over the past several years due to what MCH CEO Ron Gleason described as “some bad decisions made in the past.” Gleason said the facility is looking to the future, is making changes in how they operate to better serve the community and they are hoping the public will help them move forward to becoming a financially viable institution.

Gleason said the reason he and other representatives including hospital board chair John Woodland believe the facility should be saved and the levy passed is because, without it, many negative results could transpire that would affect the lives of Mineral County residents regardless of whether they use the hospital.

He also said he had heard a series of rumors and misconceptions regarding the levy that, according to Gleason, simply are not true and that is one reason for the upcoming community meetings.

“There’s a lot of people that are under the assumption that the hospital and the clinic are one entity,” Gleason said. “The clinic is owned by a separate non-profit. We manage and run the hospital. There is a political subdivision of the county that is the county hospital district that owns all of the assets and also all of the debt. That entity leases the facility to the non-profit corporation and that is the operating entity. So the non-profit pays all the bills but that county hospital district still owns all the assets and the debt. So if the hospital and the non-profit were to not survive, the debt doesn’t go away. The county is still responsible for all the debt. People need to understand the debt doesn’t go away. The taxpayers would still pay for that.”

Gleason said another misconception he has heard from members of the community is that the levy would continue for years after the specified two year run. He also said the amount of the levy was not in the millions of dollars.

“It’s $498,000 each year for two years,” Gleason said. “Then it stops.”

One thing Gleason said he wants the public to understand is the wider implications if the levy were to fail and the hospital were forced to close. He said, based on his years of experience working with small communities and their hospitals, it wouldn’t just be MCH employees who feel the sting of closing the doors to the only health care facility in the county.

“If the hospital were to not exist anymore, this county can’t absorb all the people that would need jobs. We already have a really high unemployment rate. If the people here lost their jobs, they wouldn’t any other option than to leave the county. Those people who are left, in my opinion, are going to see their property values decline. People are not going to be enticed to come back to a community that doesn’t have a hospital. One of the things people ask is what kind of healthcare does the area have before they move into a community.”

MCH Board Chair John Woodland said he had heard similar misconceptions from some community members. He said, before he and his family moved here, the proximity of healthcare was one of the primary things he looked at before settling in the area.

“When my wife and I moved here nine years ago and decided to set down roots here, that was certainly a consideration,” Woodland said. “I think you will find that’s true with a lot of people who would consider coming into the community from outside who are in a position to go where they want. They are going to ask, ‘do I really want to go there if there is no hospital?’”

Gleason also indicated the closing of the hospital could negatively impact schools in the county. By his estimation, over 40 kids could potentially leave Mineral County schools if their parents no longer had employment at MCH and had to leave the area to find employment in healthcare.

“What kind of impact could that have on local schools?” Gleason said. “There are about 90 people who work here. If those 90 jobs went away that would have a big impact.”

Woodland said one of the things he wanted to get across to concerned community members who may have had a negative experience at the hospital in past years is that things have changed within the culture and the administration at MCH. He said, the facility has drastically altered the way they treat their patients and he hoped the public would give them a chance to prove themselves.

“I think there’s a lack of understanding of how much we have turned things around,” Woodland said. “It’s a very different place than it was three years or so ago. Ron deserves a lot of credit for that. We have built up employee morale and customer service. I see it when I come here and come up to the window. It’s entirely different from what I saw when I started on the board. Some people may have been in here years ago and had a bad experience and they haven’t been back and they don’t know that it has changed.”

Gleason reiterated Woodland’s point that the culture of MCH has changed and he hoped the people of Mineral County would give them the opportunity to prove it by utilizing the facility for their healthcare needs.

“I hope people take a step back and take a look at what we do here,” Gleason said. “We are trying to do things right. We are trying to get our people to live by some really basic rules about how you treat people. We’ve gone back to the drawing board. We’ve started over. Based on the reactions I’ve gotten from people who have come in here, we are living by those rules. Hopefully people will get that message.”

There will be a meeting on Wednesday, March 25 at 7 p.m. in Alberton at the main entrance to the high school and another meeting in St. Regis on Tuesday, March 31 at 7 p.m. at the senior center.

The levy will come up for a vote on May 5.