To celebrate our fifteenth anniversary, we’re taking a look back at some of our favorite moments from the last decade and a half. Today, we’re remembering one of the most pivotal campaigns for our community’s health: the Year of the Hospital!
By 2009, the old Allen County Hospital was not cutting it for our community. Karen Gilpin, a retired nurse and then-member of the hospital board, laid out the ways the facility had not kept up with the times. It was built in the 1950s as one of hundreds of hospitals funded by the 1946 Hill-Burton Act to serve patients unable to pay for services. Those Hill-Burton hospitals in rural communities across Kansas and the United States were desperately needed. Many, including Allen County’s, became the critical access hospitals in the 1980s and ‘90s. But by the new millennium, electronics weren’t working in the cramped, blocky concrete building. Healthcare procedures and billing had changed dramatically. HCA, the company leasing the facility, declined to invest in major renovations. And a failed vote in the 1980s to improve the hospital meant upgrades were decades overdue.
The need was clear, and the stage was set—literally—at Thrive’s Annual Dinner in November 2009 to take action. Dick Works, alongside members of the Allen County Commission and the Iola City Council, announced a pledge of support to the hospital and its staff:
“We need to take a hard look at our facilities and make a decision on whether a major expansion or a new hospital is what we need. And we must work aggressively and cooperate as a county if we are going to stop losing our patients to Chanute, Fort Scott, Burlington and Parsons.
We owe it to the people who came before us, and to our children and grandchildren, to quit talking about how things should be and start doing something about it.
2010 is the year of the hospital. This is a goal that everyone in Allen County can get behind.”
The County commissioned a study on the hospital in early 2010, which ultimately pointed to a new facility as a more sustainable option than massive renovation. Without action, the consultants warned, Allen County would lose its hospital within seven to ten years. The report recommended the County terminate the lease with HCA, regain responsibility and control of the hospital, and undertake the building of a replacement. But that meant a significant investment: $30 million in total, and the County needed to come up with $5 million up front. Local banks agreed to float the loan together, and a quarter-cent sales tax increase was proposed to finance it. But it would come down to the voters to pull the trigger.
Increasing taxes is rarely a popular option, especially for large projects with slow payoffs. So, this was surely a controversial measure, right?
Not necessarily! The referendum passed with a landslide 72% approval, winning 3,221 to 1,221 votes.
Jim Gilpin, retired Iola banker and community leader, credits a robust voter education campaign that mobilized more than 200 volunteers to knock doors, write letters to the editor, and voice their support across the community. “In the end, people will do reasonable things, even though it will cost them money,” Jim figures. He saw Allen Countians of all stripes come together to make an important decision. “Every generation has to respond to its own changes,” he said, and this was a major one.
Now part of the Saint Luke’s network, Allen County Regional Hospital sits on the north end of Iola. On the old site, Thrive helped envision a bold redevelopment of “hospital corner” at First and Madison streets, where G&W Foods and Eastgate Lofts now sit. And we’re still looking for ways to help Allen County make big steps into the future.
