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SoHum Health CEO Responds to Opponents, District Details New Hospital Plans · KMUD News

• 0:00
  Speaker A: As architectural plans are showcased for a new hospital, Southern Humboldt Community Healthcare District CEO Matt Rees is lobbying hard for Measure K and the future of the health district. As a reminder, Measure K is the proposed bond package in Southern Humboldt that would result in $25 million in funding for a new hospital in Garberville. The bonds would be paid for over 30 years via via yearly property taxes of approximately $80 per $100,000 of assessed home value. In the interest of transparency and journalistic integrity, I would like to once again disclose that my spouse works for the Southern Humboldt Community Healthcare District Matt Rees sent KMUDD a public letter last week responding to community members who spoke in opposition to Measure K on our Tuesday, October 20th broadcast. KMUD News does not oppose or endorse any candidate or ballot measure. The story on Measure K opponents happened because Daryl Czerny called us after we did a story with SOHAM Health highlighting Measure K. Daryl stated that we should have people opposed to the measure on our broadcast. We want to showcase a large range of viewpoints during any election cycle and don't want to close our airwaves to anyone. The opinions of the people we interview are their own and not of KMUD News. Matt's letter is appreciated and we want to relay some of his points on this broadcast. We also found two statements Matt made that could lead to potential corrections from our previous story and we are currently awaiting documentation from the health district. In our previous piece, Daryl Czerny argued for the seismically non compliant Gerald Phelps Hospital to be renovated instead of replaced. In his letter to kmud, Matt Rees detailed why a renovation was not possible, stating in part, we want to be very clear the existing structure cannot be retrofitted. No estimates were provided for retrofitting work because it cannot be done. Multiple licensed architects have stated that retrofit is not possible. On the Gerald Phelps Building on Cedar street, there is no financially or architecturally feasible manner by which to modify the existing facility to meet current code and statutory requirements, end quote. Those comments on a lack of ability to renovate the current facility were echoed in a public letter by Doug Strout, lead architect for the proposed new Southern Humboldt Hospital. Doug's letter details undersized facilities, mechanical issues, obsolete systems and compromised workflow patterns, among other reasons as to why the current facility is ill suited for a retrofit. The current Garberville Hospital was not purpose built and was originally an expansion of founding Dr. Gerald Phelps's home. The design for the proposed new hospital was detailed in a virtual presentation by Ratcliffe Architects and Soham Health. Last Thursday, principal architect Doug Strout led off the presentation with comments speaking to the proposed new hospital's efficiency and site selection.
• 3:18
  Speaker B: It is primarily a one story building. It has nursing units on an upper floor in the hospital side and future outpatient services on the clinic building side. And I'm just indicating that this is a nice sized plot of land to fit this and all the vehicular circulation needs to go around this. But from an architectural and planning point of view, it's a nice location. We do a lot of this kind of work. And the fact that the hospital, the district was able to find a site that was easily accessible from town, visible from Highway 101, that makes it perfect for a hospital because you need to easily get to. It needs to be easily visible, certainly for emergency services as well as all other health care needs.
• 4:14
  Speaker A: Doug Strout also revealed that floor space had been shrunk from prior designs to minimize cost.
• 4:21
  Speaker B: Architectural and engineering team first designed the building. We had a footprint which you see on top here. This is the first floor. And then we thought, you know, we need to tighten this up as best as possible. So at that time we actually reduced the size of the hospital at that floor by 24%. And so because we, we want to minimize the expense and the investment to get still the same services and this would be best for the county and surrounding areas. So what we do to do that is we shift as much program into less expensive buildings as much as possible. And the clinic building part of this is less expensive than the hospital side. We also try to minimize spaces as much as the code allows, while still making the spaces very usable. Hospitals cost more money than outpatient buildings. But we only put in the hospital what had to be in a hospital, what's dictated by the state. So we are showing emergency services, imaging services, dietary materials, management is deliveries and then clinical lab is also required. And fortunately the district has an agreement with a nearby hospital for surgical services and everything that supports that. So we didn't have to build that those services are available nearby. But for this structure we didn't have to include that in the program. So that saves a lot of money.
• 5:59
  Speaker A: The continuing lack of surgical services in the new hospital is better assisted by plans for a dedicated helipad. So Hump Health COO Ken Scown explained the utility of the new helipad in response to an audience question on emergency care for those in Shelter Cove. In case of a major medical event,
• 6:21
  Speaker C: you would be more than likely from Shelter Cove picked up by helicopter and taken to a tertiary center, you would not be brought to Garberville per se, particularly in cases of a need for some kind of surgical intervention. So there would be assessments done based upon the circumstance each time. But the intent of the helicop, the helisop in Garberville specifically is not for people to be brought to the facility and cared for per se, but rather if you are in the facility and there is a need for you to go to a more advanced level of care, depending on your circumstance, you would be able to be transported much more rapidly than the current process.
• 7:06
  Speaker A: Even with efficient plans, New hospitals are expensive. The total project is estimated at just under $100 million, and Measure K would represent around $25 million, or about a quarter of that total if passed by voters on November 3rd. Some additional funding sources for the new facility and the health district were detailed by Matt Rees in two interviews with KMUD News this year. In an interview on July 6, Matt Rees spoke about additional revenue generated from the health district's retail buildout on Redwood Drive, revenue that is more resilient to government spending cuts for healthcare programs.
• 7:47
  Speaker D: Diversified our services so that we can stay in business and that opened up a pharmacy because it's not it doesn't get cut like doctors and hospitals do. Pharmacy services haven't had those huge cuts and that especially to the pharmacies. The drug companies and all that have felt pressure, but the pharmacies haven't felt as much pressure and so they're a retail provider and they fall in that retail category. And so they get out of a lot of these cuts and a lot of things that take place. And so same thing with optometry and that the Fortuna optometry is in the same bucket. It's more of a retail operation, not a provider operation like hospital and Clinic.
• 8:36
  Speaker A: In our October 8th Measure K discussion, Soham Health CEO Matt Rees detailed how 40% of the new Southern Humboldt Hospital project could be paid for through reimbursements from Medicare.
• 8:50
  Speaker D: Since we have the designation as a critical access hospital, our reimbursement with Medicare is going to increase since about since right around 40% of our patients are Medicare patients, we will get additional 40% reimbursement from Medicare for this project. So it's going to be paying off about 40% of the project. Like when you do taxes, the IRS is either going to pay you or you're going to pay them based upon what your liability is for the year. We turn in a cost report to Medicare, which is like a giant tax return, and the tax return basically says list all the costs out and it'll say okay, you had you had $100 million of cost just to round to use round figures 40% of your patients were Medicare patients. So we're going to pay you $40 million. And then when we turn the cost report in we say okay, for all the services we offered you paid us 30 million so Medicare you owe us 10 million more or if they paid us 50 million then we owe them 10 million. And that so it brings their our reimbursement to take care of Medicare patients to cost and so it's going to pay for 40% of the project because 40% of our patients, our Medicare patients.
• 10:14
  Speaker A: Ultimately, southern Humboldt voters will have to decide whether to add $25 million from property taxes to the diversified funding pool proposed to build a new hospital in Garberville. The measure K bond package will need over two thirds of the vote inside the Southern Humboldt community health care district on November 3rd to pass. For KMUD news, I'm April Lewis.