Hospital is necessary for Ritzville

There are many sides to the ongoing saga of the effort to decide whether or not to build a new hospital/clinic in Ritzville.

To me, the question is not if we need a NEW hospital – it is whether we need a hospital at all. Again – to me, it is an obvious YES, of course we need a hospital. No, we don’t need to try to build a Deaconess, or Sacred Heart, here in Ritzville, but we do need a facility with a few beds and a good emergency department, along with clinic rooms, radiology, physical therapy and laboratory, and of course office space for administration and accounting staff.

The bare truth is if we don’t pass the levy, and try to limp along with the present facility, we won’t have a hospital at all in a very short time. The Fire Marshal’s office has been “Grandfathering” the facility because the plans for a new structure are in the works, but without that forward plan they will have to enforce the codes and, either bring the facility up to par, or close it. The costs involved in plumbing, wiring and asbestos abatement have been put out there, beginning at about a half million dollars, with what can be seen on the surface, and we all know that cost overruns on this kind of project usually run high and we’d still have an outdated, 60-year old building still in need of many other repairs.

We moved here about 14 years ago from Enterprise, Oregon, where I served on the Hospital District board, and we had just gone through the same process – spending over a decade trying to decide whether or not to build, then going through the whole Bond process. That area is a bit more remote, so their hospital needed to be more comprehensive, having a delivery suite and a small surgery area, but otherwise, comparable to the facility proposed here, and the cost ran to about $12 million. So a $10 million price tag for a hospital/clinic, while it sounds like a lot of money, is actually a reasonable figure.

Please join me in voting YES for the Hospital Bond Levy and for the future of Ritzville.

Phil Bowman, Ritzville