NORTON, Kan. (KSNW) – Starting Oct. 1, Norton County residents will see a change in the cash register as a 1% sales tax increase to support health care goes into effect.
The CEO of Norton County Hospital, Kevin Faughnder, said it’s tough for rural health across the country to be financially successful.
In May, voters in Norton County overwhelmingly passed the sales tax increase. Faughnder can see both the pros and cons. He says that, as a hospital employee, he is excited about the change, but as a taxpayer, he understands that it’s hard to pay more taxes. The sales tax runs for 10 years, 75% of which will go toward the county hospital, and the other 25% will go to EMS.
Faughnder says infrastructure upgrades are one of his priorities because the physical building affects care.
“We cannot add new services or change any of our building walls, so that those services that we could do here that would need some infrastructure modifications. We’re prevented from doing that. So what we need to do is to address the infrastructure that has been overlooked,” he said.
Faughner says they have a good infrastructure list of where they want to spend money.
“We need to upgrade our fire alarm system. We need to upgrade our sprinkler system. We need to upgrade the circuit board in one of our elevators, and it works fine, but the circuit board is pretty old. And if it quits on us, our elevator is going to be down for quite some time. And that’s the elevator that we use to get up to surgery. And we got a great surgery department here. And so losing that elevator would mean losing our surgery department,” he said.
The Kansas Hospital Association has surveyed hospitals every two years since 2014. Over the last eight years, public funding has stayed fairly consistent in each category.
Key takeaways:
- Out of 90 Kansas hospitals surveyed in 2022, 67% received some kind of public support.
- “Annual mills received” varied from 87,000 to 3 million.
- Sales tax revenue ranged from 44,000 to 9.5 million each year.
A spokesperson for KHA, Cindy Samuelson, said finances and the workforce are the two biggest challenges for Kansas hospitals, which is why so many rely on public funding.
“Hospitals in many parts of our state are essential to their communities, so those communities step up with some kind of public funding to help keep their hospitals going,” she said.
There are 122 hospitals in Kansas. Samuelson notes that eight hospitals have closed since 2010. That is because some communities have converted their hospitals to best meet the needs of their community.
“Kansas communities across the state have really stepped up and continue to step up to keep their health care local with the financial support,” she said.
