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NOWATA SAVE OUR HOSPITAL · One on One With a Professional

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  Speaker 1: Welcome, Welcome, welcome, folks. It is time now for our
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  community connection right here on K one, the one you
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  trust and with us today we have members of the
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  group called Save our Hospital and we have Mike Died,
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  Kim Owen and Margie Learning here with us. And this
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  is a big deal in a small town when you
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  have your hospital and some changes are going to be made. Now, Mike,
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  I'm going to start with you because this is kind
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  of how I found out about it. You made a
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  call and I just happened to be in the office
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  when that came in. What's your perspective on this? Tell
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  us kind of the setup and what's going on here.
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  Speaker 2: Well, the setup is that since in Saint John is
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  wanting to convert our hospital to a rural emergency hospital
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  instead of a critical access hospital, and what that means
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  is that they would be reducing all the in bed
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  patient services that they have, so basically about two to
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  the hospital.
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  Speaker 3: Will be closed.
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  Speaker 2: And they cite financial reasons for closing the hospital, but
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  I think more than that it looks to be a
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  bottom line consideration. The critical access hospital is paid at
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  ninety nine percent of cost for Medicare Medicaid and the
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  rural emergency hospital draws a three and a half million dollar.
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  Speaker 3: Check every year, so they.
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  Speaker 2: Think that will put them in.
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  Speaker 3: A very profitable situation.
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  Speaker 2: One thing that they failed to do is commit to
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  the money would come, all the money would come and
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  stay in no water to improve the healthcare and health
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  services there.
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  Speaker 3: They would would not commit to that. In addition, the
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  community is probably.
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  Speaker 2: One of the happier communities with their services that they have.
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  We have a wonderful hospital with wonderful doctors and wonderful employees,
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  nurses that take care of people on a daily basis.
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  Their swing bed system which serves mostly the al relief
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  or rehab and give them time to recover from surgery
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  and stuff is.
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  Speaker 3: Just excellence.
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  Speaker 1: Now, Margine, I'm going to go to you on this one. Here.
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  This doesn't affect just the patients here, but the families
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  who care for people who may be using your hospital.
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  This is really going to put them in a tough spot.
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  Speaker 4: Oh my goodness.
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  Speaker 5: Yes, families will have to travel further to visit relatives
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  that are in the hospital, and that might be hard
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  for them to do, might be pit them out a
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  whole lot. I think that I think everybody believes that
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  if they could be at home in their hometown hospital,
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  that promotes they're getting well. They get well faster if
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  they can be surrounded by their family and friends. And
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  like Mike said.
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  Speaker 4: We love our hospital.
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  Speaker 5: For years and years, it has been outstanding the way
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  they've always taken care of people. The swing bed is
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  very crucial, the acute care is very crucial. I mean,
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  it'd be good, it'll be good have emergency room, but
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  we don't want to go backwards.
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  Speaker 4: We want to.
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  Speaker 5: Keep the services we have. It's been real easy to
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  get volunteers from our community because everybody is on the
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  same side.
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  Speaker 4: Everybody loves that hospital.
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  Speaker 5: It would be difficult for you to go to no
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  on it and ask around and find somebody that would
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  have a negative thing.
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  Speaker 4: To say about our hospital. But we have had.
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  Speaker 5: We've been blessed with lots of volunteers that has come
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  and said what can we do? And we're doing absolutely
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  everything that we can to try to save our hospital.
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  And if you want to do what's best for a community,
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  what's best for our community is to keep it, you know,
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  and the powers that be have said this will be
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  better for the community. They don't know what's good for
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  our community, but we do because we live there and
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  the best thing would be to keep our hospital. It
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  will affect negatively our ambulance service.
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  Speaker 4: I mean it just it.
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  Speaker 5: You know, it's just one entity, but it's going to
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  affect a lot of different things in the community, and
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  not in a good way.
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  Speaker 1: Wow, I'm going to go to Kim Owen here. Kim's
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  got all the fact figures in data here. I want
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  to say, if you're the best fittal head here. When
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  getting this group together, it probably didn't take a whole
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  lot of effort, did it.
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  Speaker 6: It did not. We put a Facebook page out and
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  within hours we had one hundred participants on Facebook within
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  a day. We just grew and grew and grew it
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  and had continued to grow. And so with that Facebook page,
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  we've been putting out that we're having meetings every Monday
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  night at six pm, and we've seen those meetings grow considerably.
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  We always have thirty forty people there at every meeting,
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  and never the same people all full. We also are
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  advertising our July twelfth meeting, that rally I will call it,
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  that we're having appropriate and it's going to be at
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  the Middle School gym in Nowada at music starts at one,
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  the program starts at two. We've got three speakers about
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  seven minutes each. I'm going to tell you kind of
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  where we are, what our future holds, and what can
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  be done by the community to help negate this change.
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  Speaker 1: Is there a petition that's being circulated or is that
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  something that we're going to probably be talking ab outside
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  of it. I didn't want to jump ahead.
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  Speaker 6: No, no, no, that's fine, And that's one of the
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  things that we have all so many of the businesses
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  have put out a petition we're asking everyone to sign.
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  We showed up at the Fourth of July celebration, we
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  showed up at a food contest that the Farmers Market had,
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  and we have I know, I have over five hundred
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  signatures that I counted last night and I haven't even collected.
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  And that's from everybody from the celebration and what people
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  have signed at the meetings and haven't even picked up
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  any of the businesses yet. And so we know we're
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  probably going to have one thousand to fifteen hundred petitions.
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  Those petitions are going to go. We're going to send
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  them to the governor, We're going to send them to
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  our federal Senators and congress and representatives. Because our state
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  representatives stand behind us one hundred percent. We're very happy
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  with their participation, and the local community government officials also,
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  and so we'll send it to them. One of the
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  things we hope that we will be working on, no,
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  that we hope that will happen, is to work on
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  this with that program. The Rural Emergency Hospital program is
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  a federal program and a there's a distinct parts units
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  that they're making these hospitals do where they can't share staff,
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  which is why Ascension has said to us, we're going
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  to shut it down because we can't share the staff
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  and that's a bigger expense. However, Ascension is a nonprofit hospital,
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  so I don't quite understand why they can't do both.
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  But our hope with a petition is to make a
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  change in that program. And we know there's a senator
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  in Kansas, Colorado and Massachusetts who are championing this federally.
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  So if we can get Ascension Saint John depause and
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  maybe we can make some changes like that, they would
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  be able to share staff and be able to keep that, uh,
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  all of our hospital open.
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  Speaker 1: Mike, this doesn't just affect no water proper. There's a
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  lot of smaller communities, a lot of rural that depend
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  on your hospital.
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  Speaker 2: Oh yeah, we've got We've got several signatures from the
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  outlying areas, especially.
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  Speaker 3: To the north, that are dependent upon.
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  Speaker 2: Our hospital and the services and provide. You know, and
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  I don't want I don't want to miss a couple
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  of points. In Number one is if you if you
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  are interested, even though you're not in no lot of property,
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  and you you plan on using the hospital, you need
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  the hospital, please show up before two o'clock Sunday afternoon
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  and participate in our unity sign the petition, that sort
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  of thing. And the second point I want to make Look,
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  this is done with no consideration for the community. It
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  was done without notice to the board of directors, it
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  was done without notice to employees. There's no there's been
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  no public discussion, there's been no reaching out to our
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  city and county officials. Look, if this, if this is
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  the best thing for the community, it's not going to
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  be hard to defend.
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  Speaker 3: And you know, if you if you're going to do.
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  Speaker 2: Something like this, at least get out there, work for
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  the community.
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  Speaker 3: Talk to us.
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  Speaker 2: Let's see if we can continue to provide the services together.
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  Let's find somebody to do the answery services that you
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  want to do. If you don't want to continue our
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  healthcare in our community, and that's your business, we understand that,
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  but let's work to go and find somebody that does
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  want to provide those services, because that's what the community
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  wants and needs.
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  Speaker 1: This is a market in market. This has been a
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  highly emotional issue in the community.
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  Speaker 4: Hasn't it exactly?
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  Speaker 5: People are very upset this would take away something that,
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  like Mike said and we've emphasized, is so important to
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  our community. Everybody's got a personal story we do about
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  how the hospital helped the men in time of need,
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  and it's a very popular place for our community, and
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  it is very upsetting. We have taken it personally that
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  they want to close this in our little town, something
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  that we really need.
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  Speaker 1: And once again, Sunday is the big rally point, isn't
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  it correct?
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  Speaker 6: July twelfth, Sunday afternoon at one o'clock, music starts me dinner.
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  Speaker 1: Alrighty, we'll send them in mass I want to thank
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  you for coming in and sharing this very important issue
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  with folks who may not even know that this is
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  going on in your community. But it sounds like everybody's
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  at the said their ear to the ground a little
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  bit by the number of people who've signed petitions already
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  without a whole lot of prompting, good luck and thank
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  you for being with us here on our Community Connection.
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  Anything else you'd like to add before we close the
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  door on the show.
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  Speaker 3: Thank you for the opportunity, Thanks for having us.
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  Speaker 1: Oh that's what we're herefore to share all voices. Folks,
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  you've been watching and listening to our Community Connection, brought
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