Petersburg Medical Center, Cordova Community Medical Center, and South Peninsula Hospital in Homer are hundreds of miles apart, but they have a lot in common.
First, each hospital is a small, independent organization, and Petersburg Medical Center CEO Phil Hofstetter said they want to stay that way.
“We serve the community better that way,” he said. “It’s better quality of care, local workforce, and we have local control. Those are really important things.”
As independent hospitals, each is governed by an elected board of directors and owned by their respective communities.
Second, they’re all critical access hospitals — the only three independent ones in the state. That means they are located in a rural area, at least 35 miles from another hospital, and have 25 beds or less.
Hofstetter said those similarities got him thinking, “Could we create some network that actually forms some kind of opportunity where we have the benefits of bigger organizations, but remained independent?”
The hospitals applied for — and received — a $100,000 grant from the federal Health Resources and Services Administration to create a rural health network.
Hofstetter said he hopes the network will help keep costs low for patients and allow the hospitals to share resources. Hospital officials are still discussing what that could look like, but Hofstetter has a lot of ideas. Some include teaming up to share certain staff members or expanding telehealth programs.
South Peninsula Hospital CEO Ryan Smith said that, unlike hospitals that are part of larger organizations, independent hospitals have to build a lot of services from the ground up. That’s where this network could help.
“It is challenging in some of those respects,” Smith said. “Having partners in an initiative like this really will hopefully help us with some of those things that we have to create for ourselves.”
Cordova Community Medical Center CEO Hannah Sanders said that the network offers a lot of potential solutions.
“I feel like the sky’s the limit,” she said. “I think we might be able to solve a lot of problems.”
Looking forward, all three CEOs expressed excitement about this collaboration and what it could mean for rural healthcare in their communities.
