RITZVILLE, Wash. — Adams County Public Hospital District commissioners will present their plan to save East Adams Rural Healthcare from closure at a commissioner’s meeting tonight.
For 108 workers like Nancy Gutierrez, tonight’s 5:30 p.m. meeting at Legion Hall in Ritzville could determine whether they have jobs come January.
“There are 108 employees that are counting they have employment here,” Gutierrez, a medical technician at the hospital, said last week. “You know we still have hope.”
The hospital owes more than $10 million after three years of alleged financial mismanagement. Missing audits for 2022, 2023, and 2024 kept district commissioners unaware of the mounting debt until recently.
PREVIOUS COVERAGE – HOSPITAL COMMISSIONERS ADDRESS COMMUNITY OVER MASSIVE DEBT CRISIS
“It’s very difficult to bring yourself to believe that professional people that you have been dealing with are doing things that appear to be seriously wrong,” said Commissioner Eric Walker at a town hall Saturday.
The stakes extend beyond paychecks. If East Adams Rural Healthcare closes, Ritzville residents would drive up to an hour for emergency care.
Hospital leadership has explored mergers, but no institution wants to partner with a debt-ridden facility they say. One plan the commissioners presented at a town hall Saturday involves examining a federal “rural emergency hospital” classification that could secure Medicare funding but would eliminate long-term care beds
The hospital has stabilized monthly operations to break even, but the massive debt remains a threat to survival.
Tonight, commissioners will reveal their comprehensive plan to get the hospital back on track.
“Everybody here, I don’t believe, can live or want to live without the clinic and the hospital,” community member Patty Cannon said at a recent town hall.
KXLY will provide coverage of tonight’s meeting and the hospital’s survival plan on Nightside starting at 11 P.M.
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