Petersburg’s Hospital Board will meet tonight at 5:30 p.m. to vote on a letter of support for the construction of the new hospital facility.
The letter highlights the importance of the healthcare services Petersburg Medical Center provides to people in the region, as well as its role as an economic engine in Petersburg. It also outlines the need for replacing the old facility, which is rapidly falling out of code.
If approved by the hospital board, the letter will be used to advocate for the new facility, especially in matters related to fundraising.
At the last hospital board meeting, the board voted to accept a $20 million grant from the U.S. Department of the Treasury for the new facility. Mika Hasbrouck, a newcomer to the board, was the only “no” vote.
To date, PMC has secured a total of $29 million for the project, and site work began last month. PMC is requesting $37 million from the 2024 State Capital Budget to build the shell and core of the main hospital building. Then, they’ll have to secure another $30 million to complete the project.
PMC CEO Phil Hofstetter reports that he met with Alaska Representative Rebecca Himschoot last month. She represents Petersburg and other House District 2 communities in the state legislature. Hofstetter said they talked about the new hospital facility and healthcare challenges in the community.
PMC will hold a groundbreaking ceremony for the new hospital facility on Friday, December 8th at noon on Haugen Drive near 8th Street. The Borough will host refreshments after the ceremony in the Assembly Chambers. All community members are invited to attend both events.
In other business, the Petersburg Borough Assembly passed a resolution to host a joint hospital board-assembly work session. The board will discuss scheduling the work session in early 2024.
The hospital board will also review reports from several hospital departments. PMC’s nursing unit began seeing the community’s first cases of Influenza Type A last month. Currently, about 70% of PMC staff is up to date with their influenza vaccine. Their goal is 95%.
At the last hospital board meeting on October 26th, PMC’s Community Wellness team testified before the hospital board on the expansion of their program. The core of their message was that many more children in Petersburg are participating in an outdoor childcare program, now that it’s managed by the hospital.
Last year, PMC partnered with Kinder Skog, a local nature-based childcare provider, to host after-school youth programming. Katie Holmlund is PMC’s youth program coordinator. She said, under the hospital’s stewardship, the program has grown exponentially. They were able to serve about 120 kids this summer, which is about 60% of Petersburg’s elementary school population. Holmlund said Kinder Skog has been able to branch off into several new pilot programs.
“We had four different programs: Kinder Skog, Forest Kindy…” Holmlund listed off. “We had our first theater-focused ORCA camp, and then we hosted PODS again with the help of our Wellness Department. We enjoyed a really fun day at the Kestrel with touch tanks. We had a tour and a dive demo. We had our fifth annual celebration of ‘Mud Day,’ which is a huge event — we built ten mud kitchens, the kids had a mud pie bake-off. It’s the highlight of summer!”
And demand is high. Even now, 59 families are currently sitting on the waitlist. The program opens up on a first-come first-serve basis, but close to half of the children enrolled have a parent who works for the medical center.
Kelly Zweiful is the hospital’s clinic director. She said continuing to house programs like Kinder Skog can further PMC’s goal to retain its employees — something the hospital has been struggling to do in recent years.
“One of the other things that was brought up with PMC taking on childcare and this pilot program was about staff retention and recruitment,” said Zweiful. “We know that by having a program PMC’s staff have access to childcare.”
One of the hospital board’s concerns is the safety of the program — and their liability, if a kid gets hurt. Some programs involve outdoor activities like fishing, wayfinding, and even trips to the nearby glacier. Holmlund said the issue was top-of-mind for the Community Wellness Department. The youth programs underwent a safety audit in early October, which it performed well on.
She said the activities on their roster — and all the risk that accompanies them — are key to building childhood resilience, and that the data shows that it’s a lot more than just babysitting. The team sent out a survey to the parents of the participants and received overwhelmingly positive feedback about how the program is helping them reach developmental milestones.
“A lot of people are strongly agreeing that resiliency is increasing, creativity, patience, positive self talk, confidence, problem-solving skills — and my personal favorite, the sense of wonder and curiosity,” said Holmlund. “It helps develop resiliency and allows you some tools to help get you through really hard times and even trauma. It’s kind of exciting to see those things noticed by our families.”
At the end of today’s regular meeting, the board will enter into an executive session to consider medical staff appointments.
The monthly meeting in the Assembly Chambers of the municipal building this evening at 5:30 p.m., which KFSK will broadcast live and post the recording in our Hospital Board Archive. There’s more information on KFSK’s community calendar.
