Tekoa seeks new hospital district

Tekoa is looking to form a new hospital district as a way to preserve its health clinic. Town officials are looking to put the formation of a new hospital district with five directors and a property tax levy of $.50 per $1,000 assessed value on the August primary ballot.

Mayor John Jaeger said the measure is aimed at ensuring the clinic will be able to recruit health care providers into the future.

“When you’re used to having somebody right downtown...you don’t want to lose that,” said Jaeger.

County Coroner Pete Martin currently owns the Tekoa clinic and staffs it as a licensed physician’s assistant. Eventually, though not immediately, he said, he would like to retire.

Martin noted the old country doctor owning his own practice is a thing of the past.

Mountains of federal reporting requirements, technology to track patient payments and intensive price negotiations with insurance companies make it hard for single providers to run their own ship, he said.

“It’s getting so the only way you can maintain a long-term level of care is with a group presence,” he said.

A group can provide centralized billing and record-keeping while dispatching doctors to staff clinics, like is done in St. John and Garfield.

Martin tried to attract help from clinics in Spokane and Colfax when his partner, Dr. Tim Moody, moved to California. However, they did not want the responsibility of maintaining a building.

“You have to attract a group to staff it,” he said. “The only way you can attract groups now is to make it as inexpensive as possible.”

One way to do that is by forming the hospital district to own and maintain the building. Another way, as is done in Rosalia, is for the city to own the building and lease it to a health care provider.

Jaeger said his city cannot afford to maintain a health care clinic out of the same budget it needs to keep up streets, a cemetery and an airport.

A petition drive raised enough signatures from Tekoa voters to qualify for an official ballot measure.

Public Health Director Fran Martin, Pete’s wife, asked county commissioners to schedule a public hearing on whether or not the measure should be put to voters. That hearing will be May 7.

The proposal is to have the district follow the same boundaries of the Tekoa School District. Some of the southern portion of the school district is already within the bounds of the Garfield Hospital District. Fran Martin said those residents would be able to opt into the new Tekoa Hospital District if it is approved and they choose to do so.

The district would be governed by a board of five commissioners, elected by the district.

A $.50 levy on the $56,157,966 worth of property in the district would generate $28,078 in tax revenue the first year.

Pete Martin said he is willing to sell his clinic at the price of recent remodeling and equipment upgrade costs if the new district wants to eventually buy the clinic building.

Mayor Jaeger said the district proposal is all about keeping a clinic in town for residents of Tekoa and that area.

“You lose something, you’ll never get it back,” he said.