At the Jan. 15 meeting of the Ellsworth County Medical Center board of directors, chief executive officer Andrew Bair offered preliminary estimates on the cost of a proposed 8,000 square foot “Physical Medicine Outpatient Gym”, which could be used by the community as a wellness center.

The space would be part of the proposed Ellsworth American Legion community building that would replace the current legion building.

Bair said the original plan would move physical therapy from the hospital to the community center as an outpatient service.

“Then we could backfill physical therapy with some sort of revenue generating thing,” he added.

Bair said participation in the proposed community center has never been part of the hospital’s strategic plan.

Bair said the cost to prepare a “shell” for the physical medicine outpatient gym is $545,000.

He said the Logan-based Dane G. Hansen Foundation would pay 50 percent of that cost off the top — $272,500.

Bair noted the space for the gym is 40 percent of the square footage of the building. Therefore, ECMC would be responsible for paying $109,000 startup.

“We’ve not went through all the financing and everything, but this is about what we think it would be,” he said.

Bair said the total cost of the entire legion building ranges from a high of $1.8 million to a low of $1.2 million.

The Hansen Foundation will pay 50 percent of that amount — from a low of $680,000 to a high of $900,000.

The hospital’s 40 percent responsibility would amount to a high of $360,000 to a low of $240,000.

“We paid more than this for our generator,” Bair said.

“This is probably a once-in-alifetime opportunity to gain some square footage for an outpatient service,” he said.

He said there are those that think building this project would bring new revenue to the community.

“This project is linked intricately to our participation,” he said.“That’s what I understand. Dane G. Hansen doesn’t want to do something that is not a collaborative effort with us — we’re the linchpin.”

Board member Karen Pauley asked how this would tie into what the community asked for in the community health needs assessment.

“They said they wanted an affordable wellness center,” Bair said.

“What does wellness center mean?” Pauley asked.

“I think it’s more than a center to work out,” Bair responded.

He said the proposed center has a kitchen. That could be used by the hospital staff during diabetic education to show diabetic patients how to prepare food.

“We can’t do that now,” Bair added.

He said the kitchen would have to be leased from the Ellsworth American Legion.

“We’ve got to figure out how to make this a revenue producing proposal,” Bair said. “I think the way you do it is to backfill the vacated space that physical therapy has with something that is going to generate some significant revenue.”

He said getting occupational therapy out of the hospital would be a goal because it takes up two huge rooms. One room, however, could be subdivided into two offices while the other could easily be made into a mammography room.

“I think you create revenue that way,” Bair said.

Bair said he would be discussing the proposed project Jan. 15 with officials from the Ellsworth County Health Care Foundation.

Bair said there are still a couple of steps he thinks need done before he asked for a decision from the board.

Pauley asked Shannon Mog and his wife, Lindsay, owners of the new High Jinks Rec Club in Ellsworth, if the proposed wellness center would be in competition with their business.

“We feel like it would be direct competition with what we have going on if it’s a wellness center,” Shannon Mog said.

Pauley asked the Mogs if they thought people would continue to visit their center as well if the proposed center is built.

“It depends upon the magnitude you are going to go to with the space,” Lindsay Mog said.

“We’re not here to kill big dreams for Ellsworth,” Shannon Mog said.“We’ve got a small event center implemented into what we’ve got going on. We’ve said from the git go if we get support and things are going well we would expand immediately.”

He said while competition is good, there are certain areas where the proposed wellness center would be detrimental to his business.

Mog said part of his skepticism stems from the white space available on the proposed floor plan and that it doesn’t become something with extra equipment laying around.

“The equipment investment will actually be a small part of that,” he said.“To where its a state-of-the-art wellness center. When it’s all said and done where people can come in and work out and siphon memberships from our enterprise.”

Mog asked for transparency from the hospital board.

“We’re not the only ones here that have questions,” he said.

Pauley said the hospital is non-profit so for anything to move forward it needs to make economic sense, or the hospital doesn’t have the money to do it.

“We would have to look at it from both perspectives,” Pauley said.“It’s a great opportunity. You’ve get a lot of space for not a whole lot of money — it’s forward looking for the Legion and the Sons of the Legion to do this. But again, as a non-profit, not having any money and being very tight with our budget, it would have to make economic sense — not just today, but going forward.”

“We appreciate the practicality and the rationality going forward on the taxpayer’s dime,” Shannon Mog said.

Pauley asked Bair to find out answers to questions dealing with how the proposed building would tie in with the hospital’s community health needs assessment, how would the hospital get reimbursed for the services to be provided, how much is it going to cost to provide those services and is the proposal sustainable.

Bair said he will gather some additional information and report back to the board.

“And it sounds like I need to involve some more people in the community,” he said.“I’ll see who I can bring to the table.”