By Scott Fitzgerald
ALVA — The 1970s sounds like a not so distant past.
But in the rapidly changing world of health care and hospitals, it is long time past.
Working with that reality, the town of Alva and its municipal hospital authority have embarked on an aggressive renovation plan designed to maintain Share Medical Center located southwest of town atop a hill.
“We are just modernizing what we presently have. It’s 35 years old,” said president Scott Ware of Hopeton State Bank, who serves as vice-chairman of the Alva Hospital Authority Board of Trustees.
It hasn’t been a simple needs and assessment formula that authority members reviewed when looking at bolstering their hospital’s future.
The review has included a perusal of statistics regarding rural health care in general and what SMC means to the economy.
It also required a sales tax approval from a caring community that knows there is no substitute for beneficial health care, Ware said.
SMC is the second largest employer in Woods County, putting nearly 200 people to work on a $5.5 million payroll and operating on a $11 million annual budget.
Patient care encompasses nearby rural Kansas towns in addition to outlying northwest Oklahoma towns of Cherokee, Waynoka and Freedom.
The hospital provides emergency room services to about 260 patients monthly, according to the hospital’s Web site.
Four years in the making, the renovation centers on two distinct phases — an approximate 14,000-square-foot building project on the east end of the hospital that will provide for a new emergency room, laboratory, registration area and outpatient clinical rooms, said Barbara Oestmann, SMC chief executive officer.
The second phase entails structurally stabilizing the west end of the hospital to keep needed space, Oestmann said.
Initially planned for demolition, authority members learned of new technological means to elevate the west side structure that proves to be a cost-savings measure instead of building more floor space.
The $9.2 million project is being financed through the issuance of revenue bonds that will be paid back over a 15-to-20 year period from a 11/4-cent sales tax that voters approved in August 2004. Hospital revenues will also be used to offset the debt, Ware said.
Building will begin in April or May 1 by the latest. Completion is expected by the end of 2007, Oestmann said.
“We are hoping this new project will help us in our efforts to recruit medical people here. We hope it will attract specialists from Enid and Pratt (Kan.),” Ware said.
