DARLINGTON — The Lafayette County Hospital Committee met March 27 and approved offering $25,000 to purchase land in Argyle to build a new primary care clinic.
The committee will be going through Jim Pahnke and Pahnke Real Estate to purchase two plots of land near the corner of Wisconsin 81 and Wis. 78 in Argyle owned by Sam Hanson.
“We have found a suitable property at a reasonable price and we are now moving forward,” said Lafayette County Board Chair Jack Sauer.
When discussing the economic impact of the hospital on the county, committee member Bev Anderson brought up a news article that was written in the Dubuque-based Telegraph-Herald on March 14 concerning 1 in 5 rural hospitals closing. The article looked at a study done by Navigant Consulting which found 430 rural hospitals could close in the near future. This included nine of the 75 hospitals in Wisconsin.
“We want to encourage people to know how important the hospital is economically,” Anderson said. “We may have the hospital in Darlington but we try to keep our clinics viable in the other communities because it is so important to us. We won’t be one of those five.”
MHLC COO Molly Wiegel added that rural hospitals can make changes faster because they are smaller. Employees are able to take on many roles and it is easier to make changes than larger organizations.
Dr. Matt Solverson said “the tone of that article was the world is going to end. The tone of our article is the world is going to continue.”
“At our last co-op meeting we discussed how we bring a lot of economic value,” said MHLC CEO Kathy Kuepers. “But they talked about how hospitals can partner and be a stimulus for the community, not just in health care but other forms of business.”
Wiegel added that the hospital is a leader in the community and not just an employer. It helps create change in the community, provide a stable facility and create community involvement through its many events.
In January, the committee looked over information by the Rural Wisconsin Health Cooperative regarding the impact rural health hospitals have on communities.
Memorial Hospital of Lafayette County is one of the largest employers for the county. There are 160 jobs that directly affect the county and 46 indirect jobs.
MHLC nurses were recognized for effective communication skills by patients as part of a recent survey. It was one of the top 61 nonspecialty, acute-care hospitals of all sizes with the highest percentage of patients who reported to the Hospital Consumer Assessment of Healthcare Providers and Systems survey.
The hospital directly impacts the economy by producing more than $18.5 million in revenue and over $6.6 million indirectly by attracting workers or patients who shop, purchase groceries and buy their medicines within the community. The hospital supplies more than $6.3 million in direct wages and benefits and more than $4.3 million of indirect income.
Kuepers felt the direct impact might be slightly lower, off by a year because the hospital has gained primary care clinics in past years.
“The primary care clinics are not included in this data, it is only the hospital,” Kuepers said. “Primary care is keeping this hospital going. The primary care is a direct reflection on what the hospital does.”