Local medical providers presented a worrisome health care situation with some solutions to the Kenai Peninsula Borough Healthcare Task Force on Wednesday night.
Borough Mayor Mike Navarre created the task force this spring.
Navarre: “We have a very extensive and vibrant health care community and services available on the Kenai Peninsula and there’s a lot of different ways to look at things so I think it was a good background and education for the task force members to have when going into looking at different ways to deliver health care or provide for health care or even reduce the costs of health care.”
Central Peninsula Hospital CEO Rick Davis said Kenai Peninsula residents may be lulled into a sense of comfort by the hospital’s healthy fiscal quarterly reports but right now it is vulnerable due to health care changes.
Davis says hospitals across the country are closing down, using an example from Independence Kansas where the hospital closed due to declining population, challenges of recruiting and retaining physicians, along with increasing capital improvement needs and shrinking reimbursement.
The challenge of recruiting and retaining physicians was echoed in all of the presentations to the task force, from the South Peninsula Hospital to private doctors in Kenai and Soldotna.
Both the Central and South Peninsula Hospitals said they are still working to cut budgets in order to mimic the economy while they look for ways to increase revenue.
Mayor Navarre said this is why the task force was created.
Navarre: “I think there’s some gaps that we have here on the Kenai Peninsula. I think that there’s some economies and scale and inefficiencies and as was mentioned in one of the presentations there’s some low hanging fruits that you can get by doing it on a borough-wide basis or combining the service areas.”
A subcommittee was created at the end of the meeting to investigate the current medical provider structures and collaborations while the task force continues to focus on lowering health care costs.
The subcommittee members include CPH CEO Davis, Linda Hutchings, Dr. James Zirul, Dr. Katy Sheridan, Pat Linton, Assembly Member Kelly Cooper, and SPH CEO Bob Letson.