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Agapia "Terri" Kozeroff, 79, of Wrangell, Alaska, passed away on March 15, 2018 at Wrangell Medical Center. Terri was born May 1, 1938 on St. Paul Island, Alaska to Valentina and Gregory Kozeroff. She was the oldest of 12 children. She moved with her family to Wrangell in the late 1940s. While living in San Francisco, she met Charles Fortenberry. They were married and moved back to Alaska. They had a son, Ernie, and a daughter, Donna. She returned to Wrangell in 1978 where she spent the rest of...
To the Editor: Donating a kidney to someone in need is simple… and yet complicated. The simple part is that we are each born with two kidneys, but can live long and healthy lives with only one. When someone’s kidneys fail, the gift of a healthy third kidney gives them the boost they need to avoid dialysis and resume an active life. Why not share? When a friend went on the kidney transplant wait list at Swedish Hospital in Seattle, I applied to be a living kidney donor for her. I had a telephone interview in November and lab tests at Wrangell Me...
Next week the Wrangell Assembly is scheduled to parse over its line items and budget figures for the coming fiscal year. Bound drafts were handed out to members at their Tuesday evening meeting, to digest before a pair of sessions set for May 1 and 2. As it stands now, the biggest change to come from the upcoming budget effective July 1 will be consolidation of maintenance and facilities services under a new capital facilities department. Separated from Public Works, the new department would also manage major projects and grant implementation....
A directory aimed at assisting the community’s seniors has recently been put out by Hospice of Wrangell. Finished last month, the 2018 Wrangell Senior Resource Directory identifies various support services that could be of use to members of that demographic, running a full gamut of state, tribal, federal, municipal and private programming. The 32-page guide is exhaustive, covering subjects from emergency and safety to adult education, financial services, housing assistance, medical cost resources, nutritional aid, ecumenical counseling and l...
Wrangell's emergency services were the recipients of the first-ever grant from the Walker Foundation, a benevolent fund established after the acquisition of Alaska Island Community Services last year by Southeast Alaska Rural Health Consortium. Governed by an appointed board, the Foundation supports activities that promote health and the welfare of the Wrangell community. "It's on a project by project basis. We currently have about $3.75M," explained Mark Walker, formerly CEO for AICS and...
If it proves financially feasible, Wrangell Medical Center may soon pass from municipal ownership to new management. At a public meeting held inside the Nolan Center on Monday evening, representatives of the City and Borough of Wrangell and the hospital explained WMC is in pretty dire straits at the moment. WMC chief executive Robert Rang said the facility has been having increasing difficulty meeting costs to operate. "The hospital's been losing money for several years," he reported....
An important roundtable discussion on the future of public health care provision in Wrangell is set for this weekend, followed by a community meeting Monday night. At the behest of the City and Borough Assembly, a steering committee made up of representatives of a half-dozen stakeholder groups is in the process of being formed. From the assembly itself, Roland Howell and Patty Gilbert will be joined by Dan Neumeister of Southeast Rural Health Consortium and Mark Walker from its Alaska Island Community Services clinic; Jennifer Bates and Olinda...
Residents and city employees sat in on some crisis response training sessions last week, outlining proactive responses to conflict. James Nelson, now working as an officer with Wrangell's Forest Service office, led the courses at the Nolan Center March 15 and 16. He used to serve on the Wrangell Police Department, a position he had first taken in 2008. With scheduling in the works since last fall, his presentations last week were being done on behalf of the city, primarily for the benefit of...
The Borough Assembly in a special meeting last week adopted a letter outlining its intent to potentially partner up with Southeast Alaska Rural Health Consortium on Wrangell’s hospital. Held on March 22, the early evening meeting covered some of the pros and cons of third party partnership for managing Wrangell Medical Center. The hospital is public asset owned and managed by the borough, one of only a handful in the state still run independently of a larger healthcare service. WMC has been “hemorrhaging money,” assembly members have been...
Three big issues weighed heavily upon the Wrangell Assembly’s agenda Tuesday; impending crises with the city’s water supply, its hospital’s financial stability, and the state’s site selection for a monofill to house treated lead-contaminated soil extracted from the former Byford junkyard. • Water crisis The city entered its highest watch level for water conservation Tuesday, after learning that its two reservoirs only have about 30 or so days’ worth of raw reserves. (see adjoining story) Reservoir levels have reached a low point after an un...
Wrangell Medical Center Foundation last month issued a letter to supporters informing them it would forgo its annual fundraiser weekend this year. For the past ten years the Brian Gilbert Memorial Golf Tournament and fundraiser dinner is hosted in Wrangell each May in order to raise money for the Foundation. The Foundation is a nonprofit dedicated to support the community’s medical needs. The funds it handles fills a few roles, primarily supporting WMC’s bid for a new facility but also procuring new equipment, funding its cancer-related tra...
Wrangell Medical Center’s annual health fair is coming up, with a month of discounted blood tests available at the hospital in the month leading up. Starting back on Monday, five of the tests the hospital’s laboratory administers have been reduced in cost ahead of April 7’s fair. The screenings include a coronary risk profile, which measures blood and cholesterol counts. The screening for hemoglobin A1C can be helpful for diagnosing pre diabetic conditions, and is useful for monitoring the long-term care of persons already with diabetes. Two sc...
Assembly members commiserated with city and hospital staff on Monday to discuss how to move forward on new organizational arrangement at Wrangell Medical Center. Currently the hospital is a public asset, managed by the City and Borough of Wrangell. For several years it has been contending with inconsistent revenues and cash reserve concerns, and in the event of a default the city would be liable for any outstanding debts. In 2015 the Assembly approved a reserve source of interest-free funds of up to $500,000 for WMC to draw from in case of...
Another year begins this week, and 2018 both holds promise and poses challenges to Wrangell residents. Economic trials will perhaps be of the greatest concern as state coffers seem set to dry up and fishing forecasts continue to disappoint. Limits to funding sources will be of particular bother as the borough continues to address an aging infrastructure, though securing state funding for the Shoemaker Bay Harbor refurbishment and an expected start to the belated Evergreen Road repaving should...
Wrangell Medical Center passed its annual financial audit without complaint, though its cash flow situation is still not in the best of health. Financial officer Doran Hammett ran down the numbers for members of the hospital’s governing board during their monthly meeting December 20. Revenues for the past five months still are lagging behind expectation, around eight percent below budget. Expenses have also been lower than expected, by about six percent, but the hospital is nonetheless running at around a $224,460 loss for the 2018 fiscal y...
Wrangell’s wrestlers took third at Region V in Ketchikan over the weekend, and will be sending all seven of its students to state-level competition in Anchorage this weekend. The team brought six boys and one girl for the tournament, and between them took third place overall. Four wrestlers took championship titles for the region and the other three were runners-up. “Extremely good tournament for all our wrestlers,” Wrangell coach Jeff Rooney said afterward. “They were all standouts. They wrestled hard, and they wrestled smart.” JD Barratt s...
At its regular meeting Tuesday, the Borough Assembly approved moving ahead with seeking a consultant on the hospital’s future, while members also learned city computers had been targeted by a hacking attack. A letter recommending hiring a consultant had been submitted to the city by the Wrangell Medical Center governing board last month. Currently the hospital is a municipal service, but recent cash flow troubles and sizable costs for a replacement facility have had administrators and elected officials alike considering other alternatives. A...
After being kept away for most of the year while a petition for residency was processed, the Balansag family returned to Wrangell earlier this month. The Balansags – Vincent, wife Lynn, and children Jade, Lee and Chrysalis – have been calling Wrangell home since January 2011. They first moved here from the Philippines – an island nation off the coast of East Asia – after Vincent found employment at the local hospital, where he still works as a medical technician. His three-year work visa ha...
Following talks earlier this month with the city, the hospital board drafted a letter requesting that it move forward with finding a third party partnership. At their November 15 meeting, Wrangell Medical Center governing board members discussed the pros and potential cons of partnering up with another organization. A major reason for considering the move is seeking out project support for construction of a new medical facility, an elusive goal for much of the past decade. Among the board’s more immediate concerns is maintaining cash flow to t...
In a special workshop at City Hall on Monday, administrators at Wrangell Medical Center and members of its governing board met with the City and Borough Assembly to discuss the cost of a new facility. The municipally-managed hospital has been interested in constructing a new facility for at least a decade, with its current building in use already for the past four decades posing a number of maintenance and compliance issues. The Assembly had directed WMC staff a year ago to seek architectural...
The City and Borough Assembly authorized a pair of grants to be applied for in its name while narrowly nixing a third. Meeting Tuesday, the first item the body considered was participation in the Community Development Block Grant program offered by the Department of Agriculture. An application put forward to the program for $304,297 in funding would fund just over half of rehabilitation work to the building envelope of the Public Safety Building. A recently revised cost estimate for the project put together by Jensen Yorba Lott totals...
The hospital is scheduled to implement a new smoke-free campus policy at the start of the new year. Wrangell Medical Center administrators and key staff signed the new policy on October 24, to take effect on January 1. Currently the hospital sports designated smoking areas for staff, patients and visitors, one of the few hospitals in the state still to do so, reckons Scott Glaze, WMC compliance and risk manager. Its health provision counterpart Alaska Island Community Services has had such a policy in place since February 2015. The new policy...
This year open enrollment in the state’s health insurance marketplace has been shortened to six weeks, beginning yesterday and running through December 15. Enabled through the Affordable Care Act, Americans meeting certain criteria can apply for government subsidies for participating insurance plans. Before the start of each calendar year, they are required to prepare submissions for new or renewed coverage through the HealthCare.gov website during this open enrollment period. As previously announced last month, Southeast Alaska Regional H...
Cash flow problems have again been ailing Wrangell Medical Center, with the public hospital putting forward a request for $250,000 to the city on Tuesday. At its own board meeting on October 18, WMC’s chief financial officer, Doran Hammett, explained the situation. Cash on hand had by the end of September dropped to $311,069, down from $838,604 at the start of the fiscal year on July 1. It costs around $28,000 a day to operate the hospital, meaning WMC had only around 11 days’ worth available for its payroll and other expenditures. The hos...
