The following is a press release from Good Samaritan Hospital in Kearney:

KEARNEY, NE - The addition of a second, investor-owned hospital in the Kearney community poses a serious threat to the healthcare needs of the central Nebraska and northern Kansas regions, officials announced today.

"More than 350,000 people in central Nebraska and northern Kansas rely on Kearney as a regional referral center and the only Level II Trauma Center for 450 miles," said Steve Loveless, interim president and CEO of Good Samaritan Hospital.

"This is a healthcare issue, not a hospital issue. The region's access to vital healthcare services will be seriously jeopardized if a second hospital were built in Kearney. If this hospital is built, it would reduce the amount of medical services provided at Good Samaritan Hospital and therefore eliminate Level II trauma services and a regional referral center for the region."

If these services can no longer be sustained, patients in critical care situations would have to bypass Kearney for Denver, Scottsbluff or Lincoln for this level of care.

"In other communities, we have seen examples of physician-owned hospitals that cherry-pick the least complicated, most-profitable procedures and serve only the patients most able to pay and we are concerned that will be the case here.  For our community, this would result in a loss of funding that would threaten much needed trauma services," said Loveless.

Several studies support this claim as well.  According to the Georgetown Public Policy Institute, physicians who own hospitals treat higher volumes of profitable cardiac surgical patients, higher percentages of low-severity cases and higher percentages of cases with generous insurance compared with physicians who treat cardiac patients in community hospitals they do not have ownership in. In addition, MedPAC data show that physician-owned heart hospitals treat 75 percent fewer Medicaid patients, and orthopedic hospitals treat 94 percent fewer.

Each year, approximately 750 patients are referred to Good Samaritan Hospital's trauma center from 51 hospitals in Nebraska, Kansas and South Dakota. Over the past 20 years, Good Samaritan's emergency medical services responded to more than 32,000 911 requests and transported nearly 26,000 patients long-distance. In 2008 alone:

• 2,000 patients were transferred by Good Samaritan emergency medical services. More than 350 of these individuals were trauma victims,
• 14,295 were treated in Good Samaritan's emergency department (an average of 1,200 patients per month.)
• Nearly 450 patients were transported by Good Samaritan's AirCare services.

In addition to the threat that an investor-owned hospital poses to the region's medical services, it also hurts Kearney by threatening Good Samaritan Hospital's ability to provide charity care and programs that benefit the local community. For example Good Samaritan reinvested more than $38 million in charity care and community benefit in fiscal year 2008. That includes almost $15 million into programs and services that benefit the poor and the broader community. These programs and services include the following:

• Traditional charity care costs (free or reduced cost medically necessary care for individuals who cannot afford healthcare services),
• Unpaid costs of Medicaid,
• Community health services,
• Health professions education,
• Research,
• Donations, and
• Community building activities.

In addition, Good Samaritan provides behavioral health services to nearly 1,700 patients per year at its Richard H. Young Hospital, which operates at an annual loss of nearly $1.6 million.

"A lot is at stake for our community, Good Samaritan continues to reach out to the physicians to address their concerns and ensure that the community can continue to rely on these critical healthcare services locally.  At this time, we are reevaluating the current situation and determining the best way to proceed forward in a collaborative partnership. We are working on this with our board and look forward to finding a solution for this important issue facing our community," said Loveless.

"Dramatic changes are underway in healthcare - both locally and nationally -and we understand the desire among physicians to explore new opportunities that would allow them to succeed and prosper as a result of these changes. However, we feel that the Kearney community and broader region benefits from us working together. "