The proposed expansion of the Fulton Medical Center in southern Columbia was denied in a 5-2 vote, but to date, FMC has yet to publicly announce a Plan B - or disclose options on the table.
The Missouri Health Facilities Committee rejected FMC's certificate of need application for a small hospital in southern Columbia, July 13, as previously reported in several media outlets, including the News Tribune and Fulton Sun.
In prior media reports, Mike Powell, the CEO of FMC said despite Fulton Medical Center being owned through a partnership between Nueterra and University of Missouri Health Care, the center will eventually close without the additional revenue from the new hospital. The certificate of need echoes Powell in the proposal which says that the "healthcare reform has caused a shift in payment from volume to payment for value," causing financial challenges for FMC.
In the meantime, the center's strategy is to continue fulfilling patient needs in Fulton, Nueterra Vice President of Global Marketing Amy Leiker said in an email response to the Fulton Sun.
"We are in the midst of a transformation to modernize the hospital and go back to our roots in orthopedics and general surgery," Leiker added. "To provide the highest quality care and patient satisfaction, we recently partnered with the largest emergency medicine physician group in the country, EmCare."
After several requests from the Sun, Powell has not had further comment on FMC's next steps since the hearing.
According to the certificate of need, Nueterra estimated the cost of the proposed project at $36,157,929 - approximately $353.27 per square foot. The proposal, which indicated the new hospital would be "a New Campus Expansion of the Fulton Medical Center," went on to claim that in addition to serving Callaway County, the expansion would also serve the "smaller communities south and east of Columbia,"
However, in the description about the communities the expansion would serve, the proposal says it would serve "substantially the same community currently served by Fulton Medical Center."
Boone County Hospital President Jim Sinek, didn't see the value in adding another hospital to the Columbia area, which already has five hospitals and more than 1,100 beds, he said.
"The reason we opposed it is because the application didn't make sense," Sinek added. "Why would you force people to travel farther and farther away to provide people higher quality healthcare? It would make sense to invest money into Fulton."
Sinek went on to argue that FMC is "creating a scenario where you have more beds than you need, which causes costs to go up. That's not fair to taxpayers, to employers or to patients. We have more than we need."
However, the proposal stated that the service area, which includes all people in Callaway County and portions of Boone County zip codes 65203 and 65201, only has medical-surgical beds at FMC, formerly known as Callaway Community Hospital.
The Boone Hospital Center provides services for 25 mid-Missouri counties, according to the hospital's website and the University of Missouri Hospital serves all 114 counties in Missouri.
At the committee hearing eight other voices along with Sinek's opposed the idea, echoing that the geographic placement of the expansion didn't make sense and that the hospitals already within Columbia weren't unable to treat more patients as they "run about the national average of 60-65 percent occupancy," the News Tribune previously reported.
"I wouldn't want people to travel to get high quality health care. I want them to go to FMC in Fulton which would actually be convenient and accessible to those people there. That's where the investment should be made. If patients can receive high quality care in their hometown, then that's how they should be," Sinek said.