The Wrangell Medical Center Board of Directors met on Oct. 17 for their last meeting before the long-planned transition of authority to SEARHC. This comes after the successful passing of a ballot measure on Oct. 2 allowing SEARHC to take charge of the medical center. Senior Executive Vice President of SEARHC Dan Neumeister attended the meeting to give the board an update on the transition, which is scheduled to officially take place in early November.
The Wrangell Medical Center will keep the same name after SEARHC takes over operations, Neumeister said, and will offer the same services to patients. With the transition, qualified medical center personnel will become SEARHC employees. SEARHC will also assume all the assets and liabilities of the medical center. Neumeister also pointed out that SEARHC’s advisory council, consisting of SEARHC and AICS representatives, has been expanded to allow members of the WMC board a seat.
“I think this is the culmination of where we are. We are, like I said, very excited about the transition,” Neumeister said. “We’ve got somewhere around 20 to 22 transition teams currently working, a transition team includes people from SEARHC, including folks from Wrangell, probably many of the people sitting here in the audience, and then also folks from AICS.”
SEARHC has agreed to a four-year lease of the hospital while also promising to construct a new facility. The new hospital is planned to be a modern, 44,500 square foot facility. It will be built at a cost of approximately $30 million and will be completed by 2021.
“It’s been a pleasure to be on this board, this has been a lot of fun,” said board member Don McConachie.
Board member Olinda White and CEO Robert Rang also took time to thank everybody for their time on the board, and to express that they enjoyed their time on the board.
Besides an update on the SEARHC transition, the board also discussed some recent awards the hospital received. Cathy Gross, with the medical center, came to the meeting to present two awards recently won by the hospital’s long term care center. The awards were two gold pans, for “Quality Achievement” and “Most Improved” long term care. To be recognized for the quality achievement award, an article on the medical center’s website read, the facility must be in good standing with the State Survey Agency and the Office of Healthcare Licensing and Survey, must be in good standing with the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, and meet the requirements of the Minimum Data Set composite scores. As the Wrangell Medical Center’s nursing home had the greatest reduction rate in their composite score, at 68 percent, they also received the “Most Improved” award.
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