The hospital is looking to make improvements to the obstetrics suite to help with an increased number of patients, and is hoping for the county's help with funding for the project.
Representatives from Memorial Hospital of Sweetwater County, including CEO Irene Richardson, first presented the idea for the capital project to the Sweetwater County Board of County Commissioners at their March 18 meeting. They discussed it in further detail again during the April 15 meeting, where the commissioners gave their blessing for the project to move forward.
"There have been several hospitals that have closed their OB units around our area," Richardson said, explaining that hospitals in Kemmerer, Evanston and Rawlins have all closed their obstetrics and delivery units, leading to people traveling to Rock Springs. "A lot of those patients have been seeking care at the hospital, and we want to be able to provide the best care that we can for them."
The hospital delivers around 400 babies a year, and is projected to deliver closer to 500 this year, according to Richardson. Last year the OB unit averaged about 37 births per month, and this year they are on track to average 42 births per month.
"We are seeing an increase in the number of births we're delivering," Richardson said, adding again that Sweetwater Memorial is "the only place in southwest Wyoming that delivers babies."
The renovation to the OB suite that hospital staff want to do involves making changes to bathroom facilities to better care for patients after they give birth. Richardson explained that the hospital currently has three labor rooms that have bathtubs, which the hospital wants to replace with showers. Patients are typically moved to postpartum rooms after giving birth, but sometimes when rooms are full they end up staying in the labor rooms. In these cases, it would be better for the labor rooms to have showers, which are better for infection control and can provide hydrotherapy for pain management for patients, Richardson explained. The other part of the remodel would be putting a bathroom into the OB suite's recovery room, since it currently doesn't have one and patients in the room have to be escorted to a staff bathroom if they need it. All of these changes would increase comfort and quality of care for patients, Richardson said.
The original price estimate for the OB suite renovation that Richardson presented to the commissioners was $426,350.
While presenting the OB renovation, the hospital also presented a second capital project they would like to complete, which is a roof replacement for the hospital's powerhouse building. This project has a base cost of $73,985, according to Richardson. She added that the new roof will include fall protection measures to ensure safety, with a base cost of $35,819.
The total projected cost for both projects would be $536,154, according to Richardson. In order to help cover the cost, the hospital requested $500,000 from the county which was set aside last year.
Commissioner Taylor Jones reiterated that the commissioners set aside this money and earmarked it for the hospital with the idea of possibly adding to it each year so that funds would be available for large capital projects in the future.
"I think the idea of saving the money up over the years is a great idea, but they've come to a situation where the OB world is different than it was a year ago, and it's time to move forward in this department," Jones said.
Commissioner Island Richards questioned the idea of spending the earmarked money so quickly, and he asked the hospital to look for alternative funding sources for the projects first. The hospital did so over the next month, but came back to the commissioners without having found any other options.
"Unfortunately there's not really a lot out there," Kayla Mannikko, the Hospital Foundation's executive director, told the commissioners. She explained that they'd looked at the local, state and federal levels and examined multiple possible funding sources, but didn't find any that would fit the project. She added that typically a federal grant would be the best option, but isn't a realistic possibility right now following the freezing of federal funding by the Trump administration.
The commissioners thanked the hospital for looking for alternative funds, and expressed their support for the projects, but discussed their concerns and frustrations over the structure of how to provide the funding. Chairman Keaton West said that he doesn't like having the separate reserve funds for capital projects since he believes it "muddies the waters," and he would rather spend it down and go back to having all the funding and the hospital's budget be handled in the same way.
Commissioner Richards added that the discussions were regarding the mechanism of how the funds are given, but said that the commissioners were in general agreement in wanting to provide the funds for the project. He also said he believed both the OB renovation and roof replacement project should be treated in the same way.
"I think you have our blessing to move forward under the current maintenance fund," Chairman West concluded, adding that the commissioners will try to simplify the funding process.
"We do appreciate it," Richardson said. "I think it's going to be a really good thing for our patients."
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