Web posted
Wednesday, September 3, 2008
Hospital pleased, still some questions
By FOSS FARRAR
Traveler Staff Writer
reporter@arkcity.net
Hospital and city officials said today they are pleased with the City Commission's decision Tuesday night to approve the former Patterson farm property two miles north of town as a site for a new replacement hospital for Arkansas City.
But questions about the best location and the cost of building the facility remain.
Clayton Pappan, marketing director of South Central Kansas Regional Medical Center, told city commissioners that approval of the Patterson site -- annexed by the city as an island annexation a few years ago -- is needed as a first step to getting a half-cent sales tax referendum on the November ballot. Arkansas City voters would be asked to approve the sales tax to help fund hospital construction.
"We told the hospital (officials) if they wanted to convince people this is the right location, be our guest," said Mayor Mell Kuhn, asked for a reaction to the decision today. "We encouraged them to get their ducks in a row and convince people this is the best thing to do."
Kuhn noted at the meeting and today that extending utilities to the proposed new site would a great deal more expensive than using an alternate site, referred to as "site B," just north of Summit Street and Skyline Road. Pappan said there were 11 sites considered for the new hospital. All but two of these were eliminated because of environmental or space issues.
The mayor said, based on information he said he received from utility company officials, that it would cost roughly $4 million to extend gas and electric, water and sewer. That also includes all site work and street and road work. That compares with a cost of roughly $750,000 to extend utilities to Site B, Kuhn said.
City Manager Steve Archer said the cost for Site B would be a littler higher -- $1 million -- and that did not include buying the land. The Patterson site has already been donated.
For the Patterson site, Archer said extending utilities is estimated at $1.5 million. Road and site work account for the remaining $2.5 million.
"When you extend two miles out of town there's a lot of things to take into consideration," Kuhn said.
Kuhn said he planned to attend several public meetings scheduled by the hospital board to inform the public about the proposed site, "not as an adversary" but to get more detailed information on construction costs.
"We can't just paint this as a pretty picture, this can't be a pie in the sky," he said.
Pappan said the hospital board has worked on getting a new hospital built on the Patterson property since 2001 but have planned for a replacement hospital for longer, since 1996.
"I'm pleased," Pappan said of the city's decision. "It allows us to move forward with our budgeting and overall design of the facility."
The first step is to educate the citizens on how the hospital decided on the Patterson property and the advantages it offers, he said.
The main advantages are providing a location that can draw patients from surrounding communities as well as Arkansas City and offering the only acute care center in Cowley County, he said.
"Acute care centers have no restrictions on the amount of time we can keep patients or the number of patients we keep -- as many as we have beds for," Pappan said.
Winfield's Newton Hospital is a critical access center that has restrictions on the number of patients it can keep and their length of stay. But the advantage to a critical access center is that it is reimbursed by Medicare at cost, while an acute care center is reimbursed at a percentage.
Dr. Tyson Blatchford, a new surgeon at SCKRMC, told commissioners he supports the new hospital plan because it includes qualifying the new hospital as a trauma center.
Ark City resident Richard Hensley said after the commission meeting that the city needs a new hospital, but he questions whether the Patterson site is the best location.
He said from his knowledge of the area around Site B that there is plenty of acreage to expand. Pappan said other nearby parcels included obstacles such as a ravine that divides the land.
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