MercyOne Newton receives $50K from city for much-needed ER renovation

MercyOne Newton Medical Center was authorized last week to receive $50,000 from the Newton City Council for its $5 million emergency room renovation project, despite elected officials knowing that doing so would draw a deficit in a TIF district fund balance and likely delay some future road projects in the area.

Chad Kelley, chief operating officer of MercyOne Newton Medical Center, told the council at its July 7 meeting that the hospital’s emergency department “is sick” and needs some help. The emergency department at the Newton hospital was built in 1971 and was last renovated in 1994. Efforts to expand the ER started in 2019.

Infrastructure and design limitations are impacting staff efficiency and, most important, patient care. According to city documents, the hospital cited insufficient treatment space and triage areas, lack of negative pressure rooms for infection control and inadequate exam room sizes as major hurdles.

Coupled with the growing behavioral health demands and the concerns about noise and privacy due to the cramped layouts, Kelley emphasized the need for an expansion of the existing facilities. The ER receives more than 10,000 patient visits every year and is the sole emergency care provider in Jasper County.

“We’re privileged to have great support from foundations in the community (and) endowments,” Kelley said. “We do get capital. We’ve been greatly supported by MercyOne the past 10 years. We just put in a $1.5 million MRI. Keeping up with the medical technology oftentimes doesn’t leave room for bricks and mortar.”

The renovation of the ER has been identified as a top community health need, and the city supports that need and has called it an “essential investment” in the health and safety of the community. The City of Newton proposed a contribution of $50,000 to the local hospital’s capital campaign.

Kelley said the project will help some of the most vulnerable in the community. It will also double the size of the rooms, which allows EMS crews to get stretchers inside, prevents staff from having to take a patient into a hallway to perform resuscitations and lets the hospital better tools to combat the next pandemic.

The hospital also wants a dedicated hazmat room and two trauma bays.

“These are things we’re not proud of, but we are proud of the care we give and the staff we have and who we care for and who shows up to work every day,” Kelley said. “If there’s one thing I can do, it’s to try to change the environment of care and to advocate and do the funds. We’ve raised, so far, $4 million.”

Every year that goes by, the price tag goes up. Kelley said it is time to finish the project and get over that last hurdle.

“We need the support to raise the last 20 percent,” Kelley said. “We worked our tails off, and we’re proud of that – we should, that’s our job. But it’s about the people we care for; it’s about our partners, the Newton Fire, the Newton Police who come in and work with us.”

Kelley said he’s a competitive person when it comes to MercyOne Newton Medical Center. He looks at every surrounding rural hospital outside of Jasper County, and in the past five years they have all updated their emergency departments for the same reasons Newton wants to update its own.

“It’s time we do it and we do it better,” Kelley said. “This is something that is needed not just in Newton, but everywhere. And it’s time we do it here, too.”

Council member Stacy Simbro said he had been in the ER recently and saw just how many visits there are to the department, and he also noticed how little space is available. It hasn’t been updated in more than three decades, and Simbro said the project would bring many benefits to the public.

“This is a project that employs people in town, provides services to an aging population we have. It’s a needed investment,” Simbro said.

Still, contributing money from the North Central TIF fund to this project would put that resource in the red. But Simbro suggested he felt more comfortable drawing a deficit for this project rather than doing so for the Legacy Plaza greenspace’s pursuits to obtain a state grant.

Newton City Council approved the $50,000 contribution in a 6-0 vote.