WWW arkcity.net

By FOSS FARRAR
Traveler Staff Writer

Joe Spiser, chairman of the South Central Kansas Regional Medical Center Board of Trustees for the past several years, was honored today by fellow board members at his last hospital meeting here before taking on a new position in Great Bend.

Spiser, an Arkansas City native, said he started in his new position Jan. 18 at American State Bank and Trust NA in Great Bend. He recently quit his job at Home National Bank, where he was bank auditor for the past nine years.

He said the highlight of his work on the SCKRMC board has been seeing the fruition of several years of planning a replacement hospital for Ark City. A new, for-profit hospital to be located two miles north of the city will replace the current facility under an agreement recently approved by the City Commission.

"We have a plan people have worked on for so long; it's now being turned into a reality," Spiser said.

He said he is reluctant to leave Ark City, but he "just had an opportunity and decided to accept."

"I very much hate to leave Arkansas City; it's been good to me and my family," Spiser said during a break in the monthly board meeting.

He will move to Great Bend soon, while his wife, Suzan, and son Nick, remain here temporarily, he said. They will stay through the end of the school year, when Nick, a senior at Arkansas City High School, is expected to graduate.

Carol Hearne, vice chairwoman of the SCKRMC board, thanked Spiser for his leadership in moving forward on the project to build a replacement hospital for Ark City.

Local physician Bob Yoachim, president of the Midwest Healthcare Alliance, a group of Ark City doctors who are investors in the new hospital project, told the SCKRMC board today that some details of the architectural plans for the new hospital have yet to be ironed out. Yoachim plans to meet tonight in Wichita with Cardiovascular Hospitals of America, a Wichita-based organization that builds hospitals and will be 51 percent owner of the new hospital.

Yoachim said CHA has a "core" design plan for the hospitals it builds. That core plan is being used in the construction for a hospital in Andover, for instance. But the Ark City facility will need to have areas that the Andover facility doesn't have, including obstetrics, he said.

Yoachim will discuss with CHA representatives tonight the specific design needs for the Ark City facility, he said. The new hospital will be called CoVista Medical Center.