Roughly 100 people attended the recent Lower Florida Keys Hospital District board meeting, and some voiced their opinions about the existing lease between the hospital district and Community Health Systems Inc. (CHS) and the future of the hospital as the lease is set to expire in five years.
The Lower Florida Keys Hospital District is an independent special district, created in 1967 by act of the Florida Legislature, and was established to construct, lease, operate and maintain a hospital or hospitals, medical facilities and other health care services in the Lower Keys. The district currently leases Lower Keys Medical Center to CHS.
The existing lease between Community Health Systems Inc. (CHS) and the Lower Florida Keys Hospital District will expire in 2029. The 30-year lease was initially put into place in 1999 with Health Management Associates, which was acquired in 2013 by Community Health Systems.
The upcoming lease, either placing it out to bid or renewing it with CHS, has drawn much attention in the community, and Key West City Commissioner Sam Kaufman has formed a task force comprised of community members, local doctors and other medical care providers. Kaufman and others addressed the board Wednesday, May 8. The district board only took input and did not make any decisions.
Kaufman addressed the hospital district board and called on it to put the lease out to bid in what he called a “formal fair and transparent process to have a comparative analysis of potential operators.”
“It’s (the hospital) a critical issue facing our community,” Kaufman said. “I know there will be more in-depth analysis, discussions and maybe even brainstorming on how we can move in the best direction for our community. The bottom line is, we all want the best medical service available for all of us.”
Key West resident Spencer Krenke, who started a parallel grassroots effort under the group name Our Hospital Key West, lobbied the hospital board to make sure the lease goes out to competitive bid to ensure the best provider offering the most medical services is selected, not just renew a lease with CHS.
“We’re concerned that the current hospital provider will be the presumptive successor, without doing an objective comparison to other hospitals” he said. “Don’t go with the minimum level of care because they are already here. ... The one thing we all have in common is that we love living here. Healthcare is our biggest issue.”
He told the board that people are leaving the Keys because they can’t get the medical treatment they need.
“I have a friend leaving in three days because he can’t get his medical care, and he is younger than me,” Krenke said. “These issues bring up a desire to find out if we can stay here. For many of us, we can’t and that leads us to you, the hospital board. For a lot of us, can we live here is a real question.”
Several members of the public spoke about limited services or not enough services being provided by the hospital currently.
Lower Keys resident Todd German, who also is a member of The Keys Citizen Editorial Board, wants the public to have a “realistic set of expectations” when it comes to any hospital provider coming to a rural area like the Lower Florida Keys.
“It’s easy to say we want an MRI 24/7 or whatever new machine that comes along,” said German, whose daughter is a physician. “But these machines cost millions of dollars and need technicians to take care of them. I’m just not sure. I want a realistic expectation. That needs to be our mean, and then we can have them provide something below or above that. Promising the world is great, but it’s not realistic. Hospitals are failing in rural communities all over the country. There’s a reason for that because medicine is expensive in rural communities. We live at the end of the line. We are going to have a hospital and I would like it to be more than an emergency room and a helicopter.”
Hospital CEO David Clay addressed the board and the public at last week’s meeting and thanked the community for its input.
“I have listened and taken lots of notes and my commitment to you when I came here seven and a half years ago I said we are going to get better and provide services,” Clay said. “Our purpose and ambition is to help people get better and live well, provide safe quality care and build relationships with you and provide value for our community.”
Clay gave a presentation that showed the services and investment the hospital has made at Lower Keys Medical Center.
Roughly 400 babies were born at Lower Keys Medical Center, staff performed 4,400 surgeries and there were 23,300 emergency room visits, according to the hospital’s 2023 Community Benefit Report.
“We are the only hospital in the Keys that delivers babies,” Clay said.
Lower Keys Medical Center provided more than $52 million in charity and uncompensated care for the community and provided $4.2 million in capital investment, Clay said.
The hospital has more than 550 employees and paid $52 million in payroll, according to Clay. The hospital paid $3.4 million in taxes last year.
“They live here. They work here. They care about you. They are part of you,” Clay said of the hospital’s employees.
Most Popular
Comments / 0