The Kenai Peninsula Health Care Task force will look for options to make a more efficient healthcare environment on the peninsula.
One of those options already laid out by Borough Mayor Mike Navarre will be a borough-wide healthcare service area.
Mayor Navarre: “Whether or not it makes sense to one, either combine the service areas or adopt health powers on a borough wide basis. That is the first question we need to answer because I think it lays the groundwork and the framework for implementing real reforms on a borough wide basis.”
The South Peninsula Hospital in Homer has been working to balance their budgets and stay our of the red over the last year.
We asked Central Peninsula Hospital’s CEO Rick Davis if having a combined service area would negatively impact those who fall under CPH’s mill rate of 0.01%.
Davis: “That’s spread over a pretty large percentage of our population. Obviously the Homer residents have a different mill levy down there. If the service area were to become one service area, that mill rate would have to be absorbed in some way now not necessarily across the board for all the residents of the peninsula and I think those are the details that the task force would mull over and figure out the best way to do that.”
Although the South Peninsula Hospital mill rate is 2.3% Davis said there may be alternatives to tax increases to absorb that rate.
The Health Care Task Force members were just recently announced but an initial meeting has yet to be set.