August 15, 2013
Thursday PM

PeaceHealth Ketchikan Medical Center, Ketchikan’s largest private employer with over 400 good paying jobs, is very important to our local economy and quality of life.  The key to the hospital’s viability is its ability to perform surgeries, which bring patients to the hospital facility thus generating enough revenue to keep the hospital open.  The current operating rooms are too old, too small, and inadequate to carry the hospital far into the future.  Recruiting and retaining top surgeons in Ketchikan will become more and more difficult if not impossible unless new, larger, modern, state of the art surgical suites are added.  The viability of our hospital depends on accomplishing its planned expansion.

In addition to the new surgical suites, the expansion will add much needed clinical space for doctors, and an ever growing array of medical providers.  The shortage of examination rooms is part of the reason why patients cannot get timely appointments with medical providers.  Healthcare is changing and the types and variety of caregivers is growing rapidly.  More emphasis is being placed on health and wellness, disease prevention, follow-up care, specialist clinics, and more.  The hospital expansion will provide much needed space for these medical services.

The State of Alaska has already appropriated $15 million towards this expansion.  The City of Ketchikan needs to bond for $43 million which will be repaid using the already existing 1% sales tax that is dedicated to the hospital.  If the bond is not approved, we would lose not only the State money, but we could very well lose our hospital in the future.

My family has made Ketchikan our home for over 100 years, and 4 generations were born here.  We have benefitted over most of those years from medical services provided by the Sisters of St. Joseph of Peace, which later became PeaceHealth. They have been here 80 years starting in 1923 with Little Flower Hospital and then building the 75-bed hospital on Bawden St. in 1943.  The current hospital was built by the City of Ketchikan and contracted for the Sisters to operate in 1963 after a public vote and a favorable ruling by the Alaska Supreme Court.  Today PeaceHealth carries on the mission of providing compassionate healthcare in Ketchikan to all regardless of ability to pay.  Last year alone PeaceHealth provided more than $7.4 million of unreimbursed care to members of our community.  PeaceHealth has reinvested $20 million into equipment and technology in Ketchikan over the past 10 years.  Ketchikan has the lowest hospital charges and the highest patient satisfaction rates in the State of Alaska, which speaks volumes as to how well PeaceHealth runs our hospital.  We are very fortunate to have such high quality healthcare here in our little town of 13,000 people.  We have MRI and CAT Scanners, an ob-gyn staffed Women’s Health clinic with an outstanding birth center, a sleep center, long-term care facility, full-time General and Orthopedic Surgeons, as well as visiting Cardiologists and other specialists. Such a successful and robust Hospital is not possible without such excellent management, but it can be even better if Ketchikan provides the much needed expansion.

Please vote YES on the Hospital Bonds.

Yours truly,

Bill Tatsuda
President
Tatsuda’s Supermarket, Inc.
dba Tatsuda’s IGA
Ketchikan, Alaska

Representations of fact and opinions in letters are solely those of the author.
The opinions of the author do not represent the opinions of Sitnews.