Ketchikan mayor asks PeaceHealth to account for summer crowds in ER remodel

Ketchikan Mayor Bob Sivertsen asked PeaceHealth on Thursday to keep summer crowds in mind as it redesigns the emergency department at Ketchikan Medical Center, the city-owned hospital it runs.

"I know that there's been days when we had people waiting in the hallway," Sivertsen said at a meeting of the Healthcare Advisory Committee, which the city and PeaceHealth formed to oversee the lease. He said that when passenger counts are high in summer, visitors coming into the ER are "in conflict with the local needs." "We really need to take a real good close look and get this right the first time."

The hospital brought numbers he had asked for in July. From May through September, its Priority Care clinic saw 1,372 patients. Of those, 939 came from Metlakatla, Craig, Ward Cove, Thorne Bay, Klawock and Ketchikan, and 433 came from outside addresses, which PeaceHealth Ketchikan chief administrative officer Sarah Cook said could be cruise passengers or seasonal workers. In July, the hospital said its records show where patients are from but not whether they came off a cruise ship.

Scott Smith of PeaceHealth, who chairs the committee, said he agreed with the mayor. He said the lease gives the city final approval of the drawings and that city public works staff have seen the drawings as they've changed. He said PeaceHealth would send the city the conceptual drawings of the emergency department it had requested.

The project includes moving the hospital's lab to make room for a larger emergency department. Smith said the lab drawings are ready to go out to bid. Next, PeaceHealth will prepare its application for a certificate of need, a state review, on a timeline of about 30 to 45 days to get it to the state. In July, Smith said that as he understood it, the number of ER beds is largely set by that process.

Under its 2021 lease with the city, PeaceHealth is responsible for paying for the renovation. The lease set a goal of starting construction by October 2023, and a repair plan attached to it estimated the expansion at about $5.3 million. In July, hospital officials put the remodel at a little over $13 million, plus a rough estimate of about $6.4 million for the new lab.

"If it holds true to anything I've seen with our projects, you know, costs from 5 years ago have doubled or tripled, if not more," City Manager Abner Hoage said of the repair plan Thursday. He said the plan needs a significant update and asked that a revised version come to the committee in January, before the Gateway Review the lease requires every five years.