For the first time since discussion began of Ellsworth County Medical Center’s $2.1 million rehabilitation department relocation project, an artist’s rendering was shown at the April 16 meeting of the hospital board of directors.

“You’re the first to see this,” ECMC Administrator Jim Kirkbride told the board. “That is what the administration building will look like once we move the rehab department into the new Health and Wellness Center.”

Kirkbride said the project is ready to go out to bid.

“We have over half-amillion dollars out in local charities applying for grants,” he said. “We’re going to talk Monday with the Ellsworth County Health Foundation about how much they are capable of taking on as a loan and then us paying at an elevated rent.” Kirkbride said he and his financial team are working on how much the hospital needs to save dollarwise to get to $2.1 million.

Kirkbride then touched briefly on the why and the what of the project — the fact that the hospital is growing and needs space.

He also noted the specialty clinics ECMC has inside the hospital, such as wound care, have grown substantially, but have run out of space, meaning the hospital can’t bring anymore specialists in.

Kirkbride said providing more space to bring more specialists in is something ECMC is going to have to do to get to the end goal — an occupational health and wellness program.

“It will be a new division,” he said, “so we have nursing, we have outpatient, we have the emergency room and now we’re going to have occupational health and wellness. We’re going to move some existing services into that new division. That division will be dedicated to local employers — pre-employment physicals, annual physicals, low-cost mammographies.”

Kirkbride said he has been working towards all the little things that are going to need to be put in place before ECMC can say it has a really good occupational health and wellness program.

“So, moving rehab over to the admin building then shifts one of those big programs into the rehab department and then add either new services or expand the ones that are growing nicely to more days,” he said. “That, then, continues those dominos of being able to bring in a new service. So, each new service we go after there may be a diagnostic or a therapeutic response to that.”

Kirkbride noted one of the other end goals is to determine whether ECMC can support surgery a couple of years from now.

“That’s another part of the dominos — how far do we go that we justify surgery, and if we get there, great,” he said. “If we don’t, we haven’t hurt ourselves at any point because we’re turning surgeries over, but now we’re getting all of the diagnostics and all the therapies, so we’re in good shape.”

In other business:

• Approval was given to pay a $27,300 down payment on a $168,000 HydroWorx 350 aqua therapy machine. In addition, approval was given to a $188,697 expenditure for Phase 2 of the floor renovation project at the hospital, to include the ER, radiology and the hallway.

• Approval was given to the capital lease of a Canon magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) machine at $28,966 per month for six years from Fortian. The hospital will own the machine after five years. The total cost of the machine is $2,085,552. Included is the $150,000 site prep for a modular building to house the unit.

Kirkbride said the hospital has the mobile MRI lease in a trailer full-time through Shared Services, but that contract is ending this summer after 14-plus years.

The Canon machine will allow ECMC to provide new customer services such as prostate and gated cardiac imaging and full abdominal runoffs.

Moreover, Kirkbride said the new MRI will be marketed in a county or two surrounding Ellsworth County.

“Because there is not this new a magnet in a building that goes to Lincoln or some of the other small places,” he said. “We would be one of the only ones in our immediate area in a fixed building using that service at a little bit more premium, and we also think some of the cardiac, the prostate and a few of those others would attract new patients because we have that service.”

“You bring up a great point on the new services,” Board Chairman Clint Rogers said. “Because I think the more we can tell the story of being able to invest in the community health and be of service and to have that as part of the sustainability and the revenue, I think it helps tell the story for the next time we need to make those investments.”

Kirkbride said while ECMC can attract a specialist here, it will never be a Salina or a Hays.

“But we want to be able to do all of the diagnostic testing that would diagnose what somebody is looking for with the same quality so when they return, we can do the follow-up,” he said, “and that surgeon or physician that is in the other town would appreciate that we have a good scanner and can do those follow-ups.”

Kirkbride said currently ECMC is missing a lot of the pre- and post- examination on some high-end specialties patients have.

“This is why ECMC added mammography as well as occupational heath and wellness,” he said. “I’m going to tell you each time I put a domino in place, and there’s a bunch of them coming. We can stop at any time, but if we keep going, we’re going to have a really robust program that we’re going to offer.”

• Kirkbride said when it comes to seasonal illnesses, ECMC is pretty much done.

“Flu season is over,” he said.

• Looking at the financials for March, gross revenue was $2,613,403 on a budgeted amount of $2,834,444. In the prior year at this time, gross revenue was $2,564,380. Overall, Kirkbride said the hospital is $1.6 million ahead of where it was this time last year.

“Finances are becoming more predictably solid, which is a great place to be,” he said.

• ECMC had 31 inpatient days in March as opposed to 51 in February. Swing bed days for March, at 15, were down from 50 in February.

Emergency room visits for March were 206, slightly down from the 236 in February.

Both outpatient visits and clinic encounters were up for March, with 1,321 outpatient visits in March compared to 1,272 in February and 1,270 clinic encounters in March as opposed to 1,219 in February.

• The board did not vote on medical staff appointments, reappointments and resignations. A virtual board meeting will be scheduled next week to complete the task.

The next meeting of the Ellsworth County Medical Center board of directors will be at 5:30 p.m. Wednesday, May 15, in the hospital conference room.