An effective advocate for health care

This article is in tribute to Ben Nelson's 26-year public service career. In a rural town like McCook, access to healthcare services is certainly a precious thing. Ben understood this and over the course of his career in the U.S. Senate he was extremely helpful in his efforts to not only preserve this access to care, but to enhance it as well. Though Ben was involved in many initiatives to benefit rural healthcare services, I want to focus on one in particular.

Back in 2005, Community Hospital was faced with a growing challenge to making financial ends meet as a 44-bed acute care hospital. We were one of seven hospitals in Nebraska that came together, dubbing ourselves as the "Magnificent 7." We all represented what we called "tweener hospitals" as we were larger than the 25-bed Critical Access Hospitals, but too small to have the economy of scale to have service volumes like the larger acute care hospitals to help cover the cost of mounting regulations and the staff needed to comply. So these hospitals -- from the towns of Columbus, Beatrice, McCook, Lexington, Broken Bow. Holdrege and Alliance -- all decided to work with Senator Nelson on a solution to receive cost-based reimbursement under the Medicare program for hospitals of our size. Senator Nelson understood our need and the importance of these healthcare facilities in our dual towns to thrive as economic engines as well as providing vital access to healthcare.

To that end, Senator Nelson worked very hard to develop a demonstration project to reimburse the "tweener" size hospitals to receive cost-based reimbursement for Medicare patients. His efforts were so well known at that time that the "Magnificent 7" was heard often in the halls of Congress. Though we had to ultimately accept a compromise to cost-based reimbursement for inpatient services for Medicare patients, this demonstration project is still in effect today.

As this compromise was ultimately not the best move for six of the Magnificent 7, Ben helped each of the six to convert to the Critical Access Hospital program.

Being a part of this program over the last decade is a huge part of the financial success of Community Hospital and has enabled our organization to grow and provide access to needed healthcare services in Southwest Nebraska and Northwest Kansas in ways that did not seem possible a decade ago.

Ben was also a huge supporter of our hospital improvement efforts from 2009 with the new patient wing, surgery suites, injection/infusion center, expansion of outpatient services and, ultimately, the Anderson Center for Radiation Oncology.

In summary, Senator Ben Nelson was a tremendous advocate for rural healthcare services and for McCook, specifically, he was a huge supporter of efforts that have enabled the success of Community Hospital. Thank you, Ben, for your years of dedicated service!