As noted in a front page story this issue, Samaritan Lebanon Community Hospital is losing money.
The hospital itself is losing money…its medical clinics are losing money…and our beloved Wiley Creek Community is losing money.
It comes as no surprise to anyone who has paid attention to the health care issues swirling across America for the last two decades or more. For others, it might come as a shock.
There are millions of ?baby boomers? now in their 50s and 60s, expecting better (translate that more expensive) health care. For many, it comes at the expense of the government in the form of Medicare and Medicaid.
The problem that has hospitals, especially rural hospitals, stuck in a giant vise, is that while a medical procedure may cost one amount, the government will only reimburse the medical unit a portion of that. SLCH won?t turn away a person in need, regardless of his or her ability to pay for services. Its Mennonite roots are deep in community service.
It doesn?t take a Certified Public Accountant to realize no business can function like that for long.
The issue is especially critical in rural hospitals, which are faced with attacks from multiple angles.
–They serve a higher portion of elderly.
–More of their clientele do not have private insurance and rely on government provided funding such as Medicare and Medicaid.
–The rural hospitals have fewer beds–read that paying clients–on a daily basis, over whom costs can be shared.
It?s not an issue faced solely by SLCH. Unfortunately, it?s easy to find examples of hospitals from Alaska to Maine facing the exact same problems.
As far back as 1999, Claude Fox, M.D., administrator for the Health Resources and Services Administration testified of rural hospitals? importance before Congress:
–100 percent of rural hospitals provide outpatient services.
–59 percent of rural hospitals operate home health agencies.
–72 percent of rural hospitals have either a home health agency or a skilled nursing facility or both.
–21 percent of rural hospitals operate an outpatient center, a skilled nursing facility and a home health agency.
He also noted how important hospitals are in terms of employment in rural areas.
?Research shows that the health sector provides 10 to 15 percent of the jobs in many rural counties, and that if the secondary benefits of those jobs are included, the health care sector accounts for 15 to 20 percent of all jobs. On an individual basis, hospitals are often second only to the school systems as the largest employers in rural counties.?
SLCH employs more than 500 persons in a variety of capacities. Most of those jobs include a generous benefit package, often missing in other industries.
Their incomes flow directly into the East Linn county economy, day after day, year after year.
A few years ago, when then Lebanon Community Hospital announced plans to merge or partner with Samaritan Health Services in Corvallis, we asked at a public hearing, if the good folks in Corvallis even knew where Sweet Home was.
It was not meant as an insult to our more affluent neighbors. It was an honest question, because although we live only 30 miles apart, our two worlds are quite different on a daily basis.
Today, the facts are that without that affiliation, there would be no hospital in Lebanon and perhaps no medical clinic in our community (or at least not one of the high caliber that exists today) nor our treasured, Wiley Creek Community.
It was not an easy transition moving from a completely autonomous hospital to become one of several operating under the Samaritan umbrella.
But it has worked amazingly well and we believed, kept our hospital not only alive, but moving forward in terms of long-range thinking.
Plans to become an Critical Access Hospital will greatly ease the hemorrhaging of red ink in recent years. Instead of being reimbursed only half of what a procedure actually costs, the hospital will now rightly be paid in full. Thus, balancing the books will become much easier, but not completely worry free.
Although a small hospital, SLCH has undertaken some very big projects in recent years. We believe they are outstanding among rural hospitals, planning for the next decade, not the next day, type of thinking.
Those include the development of an educational training center which, in partnership with Linn-Benton Community College, is helping produce ?home-grown? staff members. The radiological technology training center has already graduated its first class of students.
The new and a bit controversial healing garden, is attracting national attention.
The SLCH board of directors devote many, many hours of volunteer time to the survival of our hospital. Those good folks include from Sweet Home, Milt Moran, Marsha Philpott, Steve Hanscam and my bride, Debbie Paul. They join a highly dedicated board, including some members who have served for more than 50 years.
They are truly unsung heroes in a daily battle to provide the best health care possible and to do so while balancing the budget, being fiscally responsible to the overall Samaritan Health mission, and to the needs of the hospital?s rural constituents.
It is not an easy task but one worthy of much gratitude from those of us who benefit directly or indirectly from SLCH and its outlying resources.
As industries consider moving into East Linn county, management will be concerned not only with a stable work force, but also with the quality of schools, public safety agencies and health care facilities here.
SLCH is extremely vital to that effort.
A.P.