Olympia's budget scalpel worries hospital officials

State cuts could cost Whitman Hospital

$1.6 million

Officials with Whitman Hospital and Medical Center, along with their colleagues around the state, are concerned a bill floating around the legislature could drastically cut their funding.

“If this goes through, almost every - with very, very few exceptions - the budget of almost every hospital in Washington would go negative, and severely negative, very quickly,” said Tom Corley, acting administrator for Whitman Hospital.

Part of Gov. Chris Gregoire’s plan to balance the current budget, House Bill 2130, eliminates state reimbursements for Medicaid to critical access hospitals.

Corley said for Whitman, that would represent a $1.2 million reduction in funding. It also, he said, would cost the hospital another $400,000 in federal funding.

For a $23 million budget, that’s significant, he said. While the hospital could cut some expenses, Corley said the cut would be particularly devastating in the face of rapidly rising operating costs.

“What should we cut? The ER? The orthopedist? The cancer specialist?” he asked. “Hospitals are very expensive places, and they should be.”

Ninth District State Rep. Joe Schmick, R-Colfax, said administrators of hospitals in Dayton, Othello and Pomeroy have told him they would likely have to close their doors.

“Look at the first word. Critical,” said Schmick. “Tell somebody from LaCrosse or Washtucna that they’re going to have to go to Spokane to get to a hospital.”

Rep. Susan Fagan, R-Pullman, worried the cuts would even lead to overcrowding in larger hospitals.

“If the critical access hospitals aren’t available, those patients that need them are going to go to the bigger hospitals,” she said. “That would just overwhelm them.”

Sen. Mark Schoesler, R-Ritzville, was a little more cynical about the proposed cuts.

He said the Democrats are proposing cuts to vital services to curry statewide support for Gov. Gregoire’s proposed half-cent sales tax increase. Such an increase would need voter approval.

“They’re going to put a tax referendum out there almost certainly,” said Schoesler. “Would you put the Department of Ecology on the ballot and ask for higher taxes, or would you ask for hospital funding?”

Corley said if the hospital loses its state and federal funding, it may have to ask Whitman County voters to approve an operating levy.

“That’s something the board and the community are going to have to start thinking about,” he said.

“That hasn’t been any part of the discussion, and we really don’t want to have to ask for that,” said board member Martin Marler. “But our revenues are dropping, and now this state funding could be just drastic.”

The bill is currently before the House of Representatives’ ways and means committee, which will discuss it before taking to the full house for a vote.