Aurora Gathers Support

By Tu-Uyen Tran, Grand Forks Herald, N.D.

Apr. 5–The political momentum appears to have shifted in favor of the proposed Aurora Medical Park hospital in Grand Forks.

What, on Monday, was essentially a City Council split over whether to grant tax breaks to the for-profit hospital was, by Wednesday, nearly unanimous in its support.

Council members at the work session said they had heard loud demands from numerous constituents for more choice in health care.

Many senior citizens, for example, told Council President Hal Gershman that they had to wait too long to see their doctors. At the same time, he and others had heard from some voters who spoke of bad experiences with the city’s lone hospital, Altru Health System.

“Altru is the gorilla in the cage and everybody takes a shot at the big guy,” Council member Curt Kreun said.

Among the council, only Eliot Glassheim continued to express doubts about subsidizing the new hospital with a five-year 100 percent property tax exemption.

The new hospital is projected to cost $21.5 million to build and would bring 150 new jobs in the first five years, topping out eventually at 500. It would have about 70 beds.

Growth argument

Largely bypassed in the discussion Wednesday were the economic development rationales that traditionally underlie city decisions to offer tax incentives.

Council members had established Monday and again Wednesday that, generally, they preferred to subsidize only businesses that got at least half their customers from more than 50 miles away, meaning they were creating new wealth in the area, not recycling existing wealth.

But, by the end of the meeting, the rhetoric had shifted to one of choice.

Altru appeared to have believed economic development was the key argument as well.

Dennis Reisnour, the nonprofit group’s director of planning and public affairs, made a presentation in which he argued that it was impossible for the new hospital to meet the 50-mile criteria. As big as Altru is, he showed, it got nearly three-quarters of its patients from within 50 miles.

“Their success depends on taking patients from Altru Health System or from rural hospitals,” he said of the new hospital. That’s Aurora Medical Park’s right, he said, but the city shouldn’t subsidize it.

Tom Peterson, an executive with the Aurora Medical Park group, argued that, on the contrary, his hospital would help Altru. Being a smaller facility, he said, it naturally would have to refer more patients to the bigger hospital.

He said that more than half of patients at existing medical clinics in Aurora Medical Park are from outside the 50-mile area and suggested that they would form the core customer base for the new hospital.

Gershman, who said he’d been leery of the subsidies on Monday, agreed. He’s decided, he said, that more choices in health care, like more choices in other industries, would only encourage growth.

Also largely bypassed during discussions were Altru’s arguments that the new hospital would cherry-pick the most profitable services away from Altru, which long has used profitable services to offset unprofitable but vital community services, such as its trauma center.

The discussion about quality of healthcare, instead, focused on ethics.

Altru had implied that nonprofits care more about patients than for-profit hospitals, which care more about money. A pamphlet the group gave to the council argued that for-profit hospitals tend to pick only the highest-margin patients, avoided those with no insurance and encouraged patients to get more medical treatment.

The profit motive, the pamphlet suggested, created an “inherent conflict of interest” for doctors.

Aurora Medical Park’s doctors, however, said they do care about patients.

Peterson said doctors at the park now provide the same level of charity service as Altru, around 5 percent, and that the doctors are no less ethical than Altru’s just because they are in private practice.

Tran reports on City Hall. Reach him at (701) 780-1248 or ttran@gfherald.com or see his blog at www.areavoices.com/gfhcitybeat.

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Copyright (c) 2007, Grand Forks Herald, N.D.

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