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.
Kevin Faughnder, Norton County Hospital’s CEO, said it’s tough for rural health nationwide to succeed financially. Faughnder says he is excited as a hospital employee, but understands the importance of the change.
“From a taxpayer perspective, it’s always tough to pay more taxes, and I think that’s why it’s really important for us to be responsible with how we use this money,” Faughnder said. “So both excited and mindful of the fact that we are increasing taxes.”
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.
“We just need to be methodical in how we go about it, but that’s what this tax money is going to do for us,” Faughnder said. “It’s going to give us an opportunity to address some things that in the past we just didn’t have the ability to do.”
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. “We’ve got about 50% of our building that has a sprinkler alarm, but the other 50% doesn’t, and so we’re grandfathered by the fire marshal for that, which is great, but what that means for us is we cannot add new services or change any of our building walls, so those services that we could do here that would need some infrastructure modifications, we’re prevented from doing that,” Faughnder said.
They are bringing in an orthopedist to the Norton County Hospital. They also recently conducted a community health needs assessment and found mental health was a need. Now, they are adding mental health services once a week.
“Those are exciting things that the community says it needs, and we’re being responsive and supporting that,” Faughnder said. “So I think we’ve got a lot of great momentum happening here.”
He says rural health matters because it’s personal and makes the health care system function as it should.
“When something significant is happening, that family has a much deeper connection, and the trust is different,” Faughnder said. “And I don’t think the larger facilities have the ability to handle the people without rural health. So the fact that rural health is out here, we need to be out here so that the larger facilities don’t get overwhelmed and start to not be able to provide that same level of care.”
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.