Results from a healthcare study local officials have been waiting on provided some good news after a year of turbulence.

Audrain County commissioners, the Audrain County Health Department, and the city of Mexico held three meetings on Thursday, Sept. 14, in Mexico with the authors of the study, Forvis Healthcare, to release the findings. 

The partnership began earlier this year and the study took five months to complete. The study included in-person interviews with more than 40 individuals, data provided by the state, and a survey that received 534 responses, with 90 percent of the respondents coming from within Audrain County. Presiding Commissioner Alan Winders said they have a lot of confidence in the work Forvis did.

“We needed data-driven recommendations,” Winders said. “We did not want someone to give us our opinion in our voice and these guys have done a great job of doing that.”

The study essentially looked at two different scenarios and provided data on whether or not either scenario could work based on the market’s needs and assessments. Both scenarios are real and not based on hypotheticals. 

The first scenario and most likely at this point is to reopen the old Audrain County Medical Center that closed last year. A group called Ziva Medical has purchased the old hospital and has begun renovation work and has hopes of offering some services by the end of this year or next year.

The second scenario involves a group of local health professionals who may be looking at opening a new facility. That group is led by Dr. Joseph Corrado and his wife Donna Corrado who is a nurse.

The purpose of the study is to see if Mexico and Audrain County can sustain a critical access hospital and could that operation be financially viable. Winders said the study was not created to find out which idea is better.

“When we started this we needed some answers for the community about what is our market, what are the possibilities, and what is sustainable,” Winders said. “It’s not an evaluation of the Corrado Concept or the Ziva Plan. This is a report based on the study of the market. It will be valuable to us and absolutely essential.”

Both groups mentioned were happy with the results of the study. Amanda Shurtz, CEO of Ziva Medical, told the Ledger the study aligns with the plans her company already has in place moving forward.

“We at Ziva Medical thank the community leaders who commissioned the study,” Shurtz said. “We were excited to see confirmation that our plan to bring care back to Audrain County aligns exactly with this group of objectives.”

The study concluded a critical access hospital with 16-18 beds could work. The study doesn’t include OBY services or long-term in-patient stays. Brad Brotherton, one of the people who worked on the study, told folks at one of the public meetings it’s not a secret that providing healthcare in rural settings is a challenge that people in Mexico know all too well. 

“What we’ve put together is the demand side of it,” Brotherton said. “It’s still going to take good operations to make sure of  that even though there’s a demand and revenue potential.”

Sam McGraw, another person who worked on the study, said they used data from 2019 to get a more normal view since COVID-19 skewed the numbers. McGraw said any new operation will have an uphill battle getting people from Audrain County to stay in Audrain County for services. McGraw said the data shows about two-thirds of Audrain County residents go to Columbia for in-person health care needs and close to half go there for emergency services.

“We know it’s hard to break trends,” McGraw said. “When people start to get comfortable going to one place it’s hard to get them to go anywhere else.”

McGraw said the sooner a hospital gets up and running the better the chance for sustainability. According to the study’s numbers if a hospital is operating and is sustainable it should capture about 36 percent of the marketplace.

“If we did the same study two years from now the 36 percent would probably drop,” McGraw said. “The expectation is it will be even harder to change those trends.”

Any new operation also has competition that invested in the community recently when the hospital closed. Boone Health and MU Health both have clinics in Mexico and that data was also factored into the study. 

The study also looked at how much it would cost to reopen the hospital as opposed to going with a newtfacility. The numbers show it would potentially cost about $24 million to reopen the hospital as opposed to about $53 million to build a new one. Brotherton said the numbers are not based on any hard data other than what has been experienced in similar situations.

“We didn’t model all of those ou. and people may have different ideas,” Brotherton said. “We didn’t look at construction plans, we didn’t go looking beyond our area of expertise. We were looking at the big picture.”

The biggest number the study looked at was how much money it would take for an investor to sustain a five-year plan. The study concludes it will take at least $17 million in the bank. However, several other factors could change including population growth or decline as one of the biggest.

“You’re not going to turn the lights on, open the doors and get 36 percent market share,” McGraw said. “That’s not going to happen.”

Donna Corrado told the Ledger they were happy with the results of the study and the numbers were close to what they expected.

“It was 100 percent in our favor and was saying exactly what we’ve been saying,” Corrado said. “There’s no question we can support and sustain a hospital.”

Winders said the study, which had a $50,000 price tag, would be valuable to the public but it’s also valuable to the private sector which is trying to navigate the issue in Mexico. He said there’s still a lot of work to do.

“I’m real proud of the partnership with the health department and the city to get the answers to these questions,” Winders said. “This report could have turned out to say that there’s no possibility in Audrain County in Mexico. It doesn’t say that. In fact, there are possibilities.”