The Surgery Center of Kenai began offering free care to one current veteran patient per month yesterday in an effort to gain a transfer agreement with Central Peninsula Hospital.
Gear: “Our shareholders are mostly the local surgeons here in the peninsula and about 50% of their patients are Medicare, Medicaid, Tri-Care veterans and they want to treat all the patients regardless of whether they’re very profitable or not profitable or marginally profitable and right now we can only see commercial and worker’s comp patients because we can’t get that transfer agreement and so we’re seeing the highest paying customers in probably all of America but we want to see all of our patients. So we’ve decided that we’ll put our foot down and we’ll start treating a vet for free every month until Central Peninsula gives us a transfer agreement.”
That was Harold Gear with the Surgery Center of Kenai.
He also said they are only offering the free services to one current veteran patient per month but may look at more depending on if the Central Peninsula Hospital decides to work with them.