You can’t have a viable community without an excellent hospital and the health care services that it provides.

We’ve known that the most important part of our healthcare delivery system in Americus is the caring physicians, nurses, medical technicians, and employees at Sumter Regional Hospital. It also became evident following the tornado on March 1, 2007 that the physical hospital facility is equally important.

Our medical community and hospital touch everyone in meaningful ways, at some point during their lives, and they are also vital for the economic development and growth of our area. That being true, it is understandable that the citizens of our community are so interested in hearing about the progress being made on the construction of our new replacement hospital. But, since they occasionally like to hear things from someone other than hospital administration, an update from the perspective of a member of the Hospital Management Board seems to be appropriate.

The tornado brought us a number of significant challenges that were evident immediately, and it also brought an incredible opportunity that we’re really just beginning to fully understand and appreciate. That opportunity is to build an efficient, state-of-the-art, all-private-room hospital that will anchor a strong medical community, and that will provide an improved healthcare delivery system and a basis for economic growth for decades to come. Such a hospital will allow Sumter Regional Hospital to attract and retain physicians and to recapture market share that has been lost to other facilities in the area.

It has been our goal, as members of the Hospital Board and management team, to complete a permanent replacement hospital as soon as possible and to ensure that the full range of medical services that were available before the tornado are available again as quickly as possible.

I assure you that the new hospital will be built and it will be successful. The biggest challenge that we face is how to get from where we are to where we want to be in a way that is both quick and financially practical. Previous newspaper articles have mentioned that there is a significant financial shortfall in our rebuilding budget, and I get numerous questions about that shortfall and how it came about. I hope that I can clear up some of that in this column.

First, while the hospital had excellent insurance coverage, approximately $17 million of the insurance proceeds had to go to repay existing debt from the 1999 expansion of Sumter Regional, because those bonds became due when the building was destroyed. Large financial institutions and even bond insurers are struggling today, and given the current crisis in the bond markets, it is no longer possible for a non-profit hospital in a rural area to re-borrow this money.

Second, additional hospital funds have been spent in reestablishing medical services and in standing up the temporary replacement hospital (SRH East). Construction costs have escalated substantially in the past year, and steel alone has more than doubled in price.

Third, it is also likely that there will be some monthly operating losses until we are fully established in a new permanent replacement hospital.

Because we have very limited options to address this financial shortfall, we have been pursuing simultaneous options to develop a source of exterior funding. First, the SRH Foundation has been attempting to secure grants and contributions to bridge the budget shortfall. While there has been a generous outpouring of contributions to the Sumter Regional Foundation, the amounts received are going to help but certainly not solve the problem.

Second, the possibility of securing financial support from the Sumter County and Federal governments, in the amounts needed, is not likely. That leads us to the third possible solution of securing outside investment in the new hospital through a strategic partnership or joint operating agreement.

Before I get into that, I’d like to attempt to clear up any confusion about the relationships between the Hospital Authority and the Management Board. The Americus and Sumter County Hospital Authority was created in 1948 and is the licensed healthcare provider and legal owner of the hospital and all hospital-related properties and equipment. In 1991, the Hospital Management Board was formed and the Hospital Authority signed a long-term contract with them for the management of Sumter Regional Hospital. As such, the Authority is the behind-the-scenes owner, and the Management Board is the up-front entity that operates the facility and employs the staff. This is the way over 90 percent of the non-profit hospitals in Georgia are governed.

Since the hospital is owned by the Hospital Authority, a sub-committee of the Authority has been exploring the possibility of a strategic partnership with another health care provider. Ideally, this partner would either have the necessary bond rating to get new bonds, or the cash to help us solve the budget shortfall problem. Either solution would help us build and open the new hospital by the spring of 2011.

Of all our options, a strategic partnership seems to provide the best solution for raising the amount of money that we need, but how a strategic partnership would be structured and who it could be with are still unanswered questions. The good news is that there has been a considerable amount of interest from outside groups. That will be of great benefit as we begin to negotiate a partnership or joint operating agreement, and the details of any agreement will be very important.

For the sake of time and space, I’ll close here. I hope through this column that I’ve reinforced what you’ve heard SRH President and CEO David Seagraves say and maybe clarified anything in the process that might have been unclear. Please rest assured that the Hospital Management board has complete confidence in the leadership of Sumter Regional Hospital, and we are pleased with the progress that we see them making daily behind the scenes. We all feel the support of the community for our hospital and its leaders, and we greatly appreciate that encouragement. We will remain committed to giving you the very best in healthcare.