USDA Visits With Mahaska Health Partnership
Jay Christensen (left) and Bill Menner tour the ongoing construction at Mahaska Health Partnership
Oskaloosa, Iowa – Construction crews welcomed visitors to the ongoing construction at Mahaska Health Partnership. Bill Menner, State Director of USDA Rural Development joined MHP’s Jay Christensen to see for himself the progress being made on the 52,000 square foot addition.
Over the last couple of years, the USDA has helped finance or guarantee the loans of other projects beyond the MHP expansion project, and Menner says he was excited to see the projects, particularly near his hometown of Grinnell. He said he’s really impressed with the projects that have been completed in Oskaloosa with the assistance of the USDA.
Our Community Facilities Loan and Grant Program is the resource utilized by MHP to secure financing for the project. The financing is target towards what is considered essential public facilities. Fire stations, libraries or community centers are also examples of how the program is utilized.
The money for the program is allocated by Congress and then the USDA makes the loans to the projects. Every state gets an allocation every year. Once that funding is used up, the USDA can approach Congress for additional funding, if available.
Menner explained how USDA lending has evolved the concept of a “infrastructure bank”. “In reality we are the rural America infrastructure bank. I think our portfolio in Iowa is something like 16 billion dollars,” said Menner. “It’s a good role for us because, at times, access to capital can be challenging, or access to funding.”
Mahaska Health Partnership received official notice April 21, 2011 that their new building addition would be financed with a direct loan of $23,015,000 from the USDA, of the nearly 25 million in total construction costs.
The 52,000 square foot expansion project will feature larger, private patient rooms; a state-of-the-art Birthing Center; replacement of existing power units that heat and cool the entire facility; and a new surgery center. Completion of the project is expected in the early fall of 2013.
The updates to the hospital won’t include any additional bed capacity since MHP is considered a critical access hospital. The criteria to be considered critical access, according to guidelines, requires that the bed count not go over a certain capacity. Additional reimbursement from medicare is a part of being a critical access hospital.
“Part of it is just the way it’s going. That part of it is, the whole movement away from hospitalizations. Health care reform means hospitals are going to have fewer patients, in-patients, but do more stuff around the wellness, around the prevention and around the outpatient,” said Menner. “I mean, so when you develop a site like this, and you have to weigh the future health care, I bet that’s got to be a challenge.”
“It is. That’s one reason we built the clinic when we did. When I got here we had 5 rooms that we could use for visiting specialists. Some days we had 3 specialists. That was an interesting rotation,” said Christensen.
“I think the drive for us here, with the in-patient, really was the big national push towards private rooms from an infection control standpoint, from a patient expectations standpoint, and it’s really just the standard of care.” Christensen said. “But we knew a big part of our focus was to make sure that we had surgery designed, really, with an outpatient surgery center concept,” Christensen said, explaining that nearly 75% of all surgery is outpatient in nature.
Once the tour and meeting at Mahaska Health Partnership was finished, Menner then traveled to Smokey Row for a rural development meeting. There he explored other needs the community may have in the future, in particular one’s that the USDA may be of assistance with.
